Study provides less gloom and doom about Antarctica

by Anthony Watts, June 22, 2018 in WUWT


Antarctic ice sheet is melting, but rising bedrock below could slow it down

An international team, led by DTU Space at the Technical University of Denmark with Colorado State University, has found that the bedrock below the remote West Antarctic Ice Sheet is rising much more rapidly than previously thought, in response to ongoing ice melt.

The study, “Observed rapid bedrock uplift in the Amundsen Sea Embayment promotes ice-sheet stability,” reveals new insights on the geology of the region and its interaction with the ice sheet and is published in the journal Science. The authors noted that the findings have important implications in understanding and predicting the stability of the ice sheet and Earth’s rising sea levels.

The Failed Predictions Of James Hansen

by P. Homewood, June 22, 2018 in NotaLotofPeopleKnowThat


“Thirty years of data have been collected since Mr. Hansen outlined his scenarios—enough to determine which was closest to reality. And the winner is Scenario C. Global surface temperature has not increased significantly since 2000, discounting the larger-than-usual El Niño of 2015-16. Assessed by Mr. Hansen’s model, surface temperatures are behaving as if we had capped 18 years ago the carbon-dioxide emissions responsible for the enhanced greenhouse effect. But we didn’t. And it isn’t just Mr. Hansen who got it wrong. Models devised by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have, on average, predicted about twice as much warming as has been observed since global satellite temperature monitoring began 40 years ago…”

“Several more of Mr. Hansen’s predictions can now be judged by history. Have hurricanes gotten stronger, as Mr. Hansen predicted in a 2016 study? No. Satellite data from 1970 onward shows no evidence of this in relation to global surface temperature. Have storms caused increasing amounts of damage in the U.S.? Data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration show no such increase in damage, measured as a percentage of gross domestic product. How about stronger tornadoes? The opposite may be true, as NOAA data offers some evidence of a decline. The list of what didn’t happen is long and tedious.”

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