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Some Reactions to Antarctic ‘Warming’ Study
Jennifer Marohasy:
Modellers Remove Evidence of Cooling and Editor Removes Comment by Climate Sceptic
Is Antarctic Warming Real or “Mann”-Made? A Note from Fred Singer
Climate Science:
Prometheus:
Consistent With Chronicles, Antarctic Edition
More on Antarctica and “Consistent With”
Climate Audit:
Climate Observations:
Recent Antarctic Warming Attribution Complicated By ENSO Events?
The Telegraph: Christopher Booker:
Despite the hot air, the Antarctic is not warming up
The Inhofe EPW Press Blog:
Scientists, Data Challenge New Antarctic ‘Warming’ Study
Flashback to 20th January 2008, Nature Geoscience: A recent volcanic eruption beneath the West Antarctic ice sheet
Abstract:
Indirect evidence suggests that volcanic activity occurring beneath the West Antarctic ice sheet influences ice flow and sheet stability. However, only volcanoes that protrude through the ice sheet4 and those inferred from geophysical techniques have been mapped so far. Here we analyse radar data from the Hudson Mountains, West Antarctica, that contain reflections from within the ice that had previously been interpreted erroneously as the ice-sheet bed. We show that the reflections are present within an elliptical area of about 23,000 km2 that contains tephra from an explosive volcanic eruption. The tephra layer is thickest at a subglacial topographic high, which we term the Hudson Mountains Subglacial Volcano. The layer depth dates the eruption at 207 BCplusminus240 years, which matches exceptionally strong but previously unattributed conductivity signals in nearby ice cores. The layer contains 0.019–0.31 km3 of tephra, which implies a volcanic explosive index of 3–4. Production and episodic release of water from the volcano probably affected ice flow at the time of the eruption. Ongoing volcanic heat production may have implications for contemporary ice dynamics in this glacial system.
Dennis Ambler on Junkscience.com:
Here is what Ellen and Lonnie Thompson said about Antarctic Temperature records in 2003:
ICE CORE PALEOCLIMATE HISTORIES FROM THE ANTARCTIC PENINSULA: WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?
Ellen Mosley-Thompson, Lonnie G. Thompson, Byrd Polar Research Center, Department of Geological Sciences, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio.
It is essential to determine whether the strong 20th century warming in the Antarctic Peninsula (AP) reflects, in part, a response to anthropogenically driven, globally averaged warming or if it is consistent with past climate variability in the region. The necessary time perspective may be reconstructed from chemical and physical properties preserved in the regional ice cover and ocean sediments. Only three multi-century climate histories derived from ice cores in the AP region have been annually dated with good precision (± 2 years per century). The longest record contains only 1200 years and the three histories do not provide a coherent picture of 20th century climate variability.
Temperature records for Antarctica are sparse and short with few extending prior to the International Geophysical Year (1957-58).
This is particularly true for the continental interior. The longest and most dense network of meteorological records is in the Antarctic Peninsula region where the temperature record at Orcadas (South Orkney Islands) extends to 1903.
King et al. [this volume] review the surface temperature records in the Peninsula that extend to the late 1940s and the upper air measurements that began in 1956. Their analyses demonstrate marked differences between the temperature trends in the AP and the rest of the continent (East and West Antarctica).
Jones et al. [1993] also noted that temperature variations in the AP region are poorly correlated with those on the main part of the continent and concluded that extending the Antarctic temperature record by using the longer temperature histories from the Peninsula would be inappropriate.
“The Plateau Remote (PR) record contains some longer-term (~century scale) oscillations with a brief (~3 decades), but strong cooling in the early 17th century.
Conditions remain at or above the long-term mean from 1660 to 1780 after which a gradual cooling trend persists until 1870 after which conditions warm rapidly, peaking at the turn of the 20th century. Since that time the δ18O record indicates a cooling trend to the present.
The PR δ18O record, like those from South Pole, does not show 20th century 18O enrichment (warming), [Mosley-Thompson, unpublished data]. Similarly, the recently published isotopic record from Berkner Island [Mulvaney et al., 2002] also does not show a 20th century warming.
Domack et al. [this volume] report their cores contain a Medieval Warm Period (1.15 ka to 0.7 ka), a Little Ice Age signal (0.7 ka to ~0.15 ka) and 200-year oscillations in the regional climate/oceanographic conditions.”
(Isn’t it strange then that we are told the LIA and MWP were confined to the N. Hemisphere and even disposed of altogether by Mann et al)
The pdf can be downloaded from this link.