The recent revelations concerning renowned environmentalist R.K. Pachauri's misuse of funds and the erroneous as well as unsubstantiated claims by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change(IPCC) about melting of Himalayan glaciers by 2035 stirred me to delve deeper into the issue of Global Warming.
After going through some research papers about Antarctica published by scientists of reputed organizations I came to the conclusion that they're still unaware of most aspects of the continent that holds 90 % of all the ice on planet. Data show that only the Antarctic Peninsula, which is a relatively small area, is melting and causing iceberg calving and this is only highlighted every year. As a whole Antarctica is cooling down and the ice there is thickening. I've referred to a few publications below that ought to be considered.
Interpretation of recent Antarctic sea ice variability: Antarctic sea ice has increased since 1979 (Geophysical Research Letters 31 by Liu, Curry and Martinson 2004)
Antarctic climate cooling and terrestrial ecosystem response
Peter T. Doran, John C. Priscu, W. Berry Lyons, John E. Walsh, Andrew G. Fountain, Diane M. McKnight, Daryl L. Moorhead, Ross A. Virginia, Diana H. Wall, Gary D. Clow, Christian H. Fritsen, Christopher P. McKay & Andrew N. Parsons
Nature 415, 517-520 (31 January 2002)
1. Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Illinois at Chicago
12. Space Science Division, NASA Ames Research Center, Moffet Field, California 94035, USA
Our spatial analysis of Antarctic meteorological data demonstrates a net cooling on the Antarctic continent between 1966 and 2000, particularly during summer and autumn. The McMurdo Dry Valleys have cooled by 0.7 °C per decade between 1986 and 2000, with similar pronounced seasonal trends.
Positive Mass Balance of the Ross Ice Streams, West Antarctica
Ian Joughin1 ,Slawek Tulaczyk2 (Science 18 January 2002:Vol. 295. no. 5554, pp. 476)
1 Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology
2 Department of Earth Sciences, University of California, Santa Cruz
On the secular trends in sea ice extent over the antarctic region based on OCEANSAT-1 MSMR observations
Authors: N. K. Vyas a; M. K. Dash a; S. M. Bhandari a; N. Khare b; A. Mitra b; P. C. Pandey b
| Affiliations: | a Space Applications Centre (SAC), Ahmedabad 380 015, India. |
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| b National Centre for Antarctic and Ocean Research (NCAOR), Goa 403 804, India. |
Published in: International Journal of Remote Sensing, Volume 24, Issue 11 June 2003, pgs 2277 – 2287
The trend in the sea ice extent over the Antarctic region as a whole was observed to be slightly positive (0.043 million km 2 per year). Trend toward more sea-ice may be accelerating.
Variability and Trends in Antarctic Surface Temperatures from In Situ and Satellite Infrared Measurements
Josefino C. Comiso: Laboratory for Hydrospheric Processes, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland ( Journal of Climate Article: pp. 1674–1696)
It is useful to note that the Antarctic temperature record is based mainly on only a few stations, most of which are located around the periphery of the continent. The surface temperature distributions are also different from station to station and the trends can have opposite signs even in adjacent stations. The uncertainties related to inadequate spatial sampling have been studied and can be considerable.
Some of the datasets from unmanned stations were indeed found to be less consistent and have larger gaps in the data record than those of manned stations due to occasional malfunction of the sensors or the latter being buried by snow. Considering the large extent of the ice sheet and its largely varying elevation, the limited number of ice stations (some of which are clustered together in the same general areas) do not provide a good spatial coverage of the entire continent.
Typical long-term fluctuations in Antarctic surface air temperatures are provided by the Faraday and Vostok stations. The plots show contrasting seasonal cycles between the two stations. The trends in temperature from 1958 to 1998 are both positive but differ by more than an order of magnitude (e.g., 0.066° and 0.004°C yr−1, respectively). Such discrepancies are indications that Antarctic trends can be very variable. The average of the 45-yr trends from the 21 stations is 0.012°C yr−1 with 17 having positive trends and only 4 having negative trends. On the other hand, the average of the 20-yr trends is −0.008°C yr−1 with 9 stations having positive trends and 12 stations having negative trends. It is thus quite surprising that despite apparent increase in global temperatures during the last 20 years , the Antarctic region in general shows slight cooling during the period. Such cooling could partly explain the slight positive trend in sea ice extent observed during the 1979–96 period.
It should be noted that the observations from the Antarctic stations are not without errors and the sampling areas for satellite and station measurements are different. The slight cooling of the entire ice sheet observed in both in situ and satellite records during the last 20 yr is intriguing since during the same time period a general warming is being observed globally. The slight cooling detected in the entire Antarctic region is compatible with a slightly positive trend in the sea ice extent that has been observed from passive microwave data. Considering that contradictory results in the Antarctic ice extent trend have been reported a longer time series would be most desirable to gain more insights into these trend results.
The satellite data provide the only means to evaluate large-scale patterns of warming and cooling because of the paucity of Antarctic stations.
The computer models describing climate change sometimes vary by almost 400% ; so there's no concrete evidence of man-made Global Warming. Also we're in a natural warming trend that began about 1850, after we emerged from a 400 year old cold spell called the "Little Ice Age." It can be said that we shouldn't jump into conclusions regarding the climate change debate and refrain from politicizing science.
