By H. Sterling Burnett, Heartland Institute
In late April and early May, mainstream media outlets ran dozens of stories discussing the findings of a recent study that showed Antarctica’s ice mass was growing. The outlets called the ice and snow gain “astonishing,” “surprising,” and “shock[ing]” and said it “startled the scientific community.” Perhaps they were surprised because they rely on climate models to inform them what is or should be happening in Antarctica, or perhaps they found the gains unexpected simply because it didn’t play into the climate crisis narrative.
They may have been astonished or surprised, but I wasn’t. Having examined the data and history, I knew Antarctica has not been following the climate crisis script since the alarm was first raised with James Hansen’s theatrically staged 1988 congressional testimony in which he claimed the Earth was dangerously warming due to human activity.
Climate theory and the models say the warming of the Earth should be greatest at the poles. But while the Arctic has warmed more than the average for the globe as whole, the South Pole has experienced little or no warming. In fact, a 2020 study published in the journal Nature found Antarctica had not experienced any measurable warming for the past 70 years.
“The Antarctic continent has not warmed in the last seven decades, despite a monotonic increase in the atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases,” the researchers wrote, also noting “Antarctic sea ice area has modestly expanded” over the past several decades.
Examining the recent study in more detail, rather than the media reports about it, what it found is that after a glacial decline from 2011 through 2020, four large glacier basins in East Antarctica—the east and central part of the continent making up the vast bulk of it—have had substantial ice growth. Glacial melt which had been contributing to sea level rise reversed itself over a period of three years, adding mass and cutting Antarctica’s contribution to sea level rise.
“Antarctica gains ice for first time in decades, reversing trend of mass loss,” wrote Fox News in reporting on the study. “A surprising shift is underway at the bottom of the world. After decades of contributing to rising sea levels, Antarctica’s massive ice sheet has started growing again—at least for now.”
As important as the study may be for understanding the very recent ice balance and trends in Antarctica, I don’t think its analysis of past ice trends or levels is entirely accurate. Research from NASA in 2015 found “an increase in Antarctic snow accumulation that began 10,000 years ago is currently adding enough ice to the continent to outweigh the increased losses from its thinning glaciers.” If NASA’s 2015 findings are correct, it means the ice accretion of the past few years isn’t merely the first time in decades that Antarctica has produced a net ice gain but rather is at most the first time in a decade.
To be fair, because the earlier study debunked commonly asserted alarmist claims that Antarctica was suffering a massive ice loss that would lead to massive global sea level rise if unabated, NASA tried to bury its own report or at least raise questions about its validity. On NASA’s webpage, after a brief paragraph describing the NASA researchers’ results based on satellite measurements, one now finds this:
NOTE: The findings reported here conflict with over a decade of other measurements, including previous NASA studies. However, challenges to existing findings are an integral part of the scientific process and can help clarify and advance understanding. Additional scrutiny and follow-up research will be required before this study can be reconciled with the preponderance of evidence supporting the widely accepted model of a shrinking Antarctic ice sheet. (Italics in the original)
Regardless of whether NASA was right in 2015 or the new study is more accurate, Antarctica is not behaving as harbingers of climate doom said it should, having used their unvalidated computer models’ projections. As skeptics like myself constantly remind the public, the climate is more complex than climate models and those who rely on them believe them to be. To paraphrase Shakespeare, “There are more things in Heaven and Earth than are imagined in the climate cabal’s philosophy.”
None of the above says there is no melting of ice in Antarctica. West Antarctica and the Antarctic peninsula have lost ice at increasing rates over the past couple of decades, resulting in headline-making glacier calving accompanied by breathless stories about inevitable sea level rise unless fossil fuel use is halted. The problem is, based on temperature and ocean current data, the ice loss on the peninsula is more likely attributable to a shift in large-scale ocean currents affecting ocean temperatures, and the best evidence suggests much of the ice loss in the West Antarctic is due to subsurface geothermal activity melting ice there from below and causing ice to flow faster. That means climate change isn’t an identifiable factor in the melting in either location.
In addition, Central and East Antarctica are by far the largest portions of the continent, so the evidence suggests any ice loss in the western portion of the continent is likely being more than offset by gains on the mainland and in the Eastern glacial basins. As a result, Antarctica may be a net sea level sink, rather than contributing to rising seas.
Sources: Science China Earth Sciences; CO2 Coalition; Fox News; Climate Cosmos; Climate Realism; NASA; Climate Realism
H. Sterling Burnett is the Director, Arthur B. Robinson Center On Climate And Environmental Policy.