The continent of Antarctica is a land of complexity and paradox, especially when talking about climate change. It is our driest and coldest desert on the planet but locks up an enormous amount of fresh water in it's thick ice sheets. The southern ocean surrounds the continent, insulating it from warmer latitudes, but those currents also bring warmer waters from the tropics to interact with the giant ice shelves around the continent.
And of course there is the paradox of Antarctic sea ice which is recording record sea ice extent over recent years due to the complex winds, currents and dynamics of melt water.
Sea ice growth or melt does not affect sea level rise. We need to look at what the great Ice sheets are doing to determine whether they are accelerating mass loss and contributing to sea level rise.
The GRACE satellites provide us with a remote measuring tool for ice mass balance, but like all tools it comes with certain biases built in. The job of the scientist is to analyse and correct for these biases.
I came across an article lambasting the Australian Antarctic Expedition scientists on board the MV Akademik Shokalskiy trapped by fast ice since Christmas Eve in the Commonwealth Bay region of Antarctica. Climate scientists and tourists are on board the vessel on the Spirit of Mawson voyage, retracing Sir Douglas Mawson's Antarctic expedition.
The ship found itself locked in thick ice after experiencing blizzard conditions which moved and piled up ice flows.
Ships can get trapped by pack ice in polar waters very quickly during blizzards. Pack ice moves around with wind conditions, and it is not uncommon for ships to become temporarily locked in the ice even during peak summer conditions in Antarctica.
But Daniel Greenfield seems to think a ship trapped in Antarctic summer sea ice is a negation of global warming and the science involved in climate change. He is not alone...
In a radio interview with Neil Mitchell, Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said that the Head of the UNFCCC, Christiana Figueres, is "talking through her hat" for connecting the NSW bushfires with climate change and that "these fires are certainly not a function of climate change, they are just a function of life in Australia."
It seems Mr Abbott is in denial on all the wildfire research done on the increase in fireweather and increase in frequency and intensity in bushfires both in Australia and globally.
Abbott articulated a list of major bushfire disasters in Australia as justification that climate change is not involved. Yet the science clearly shows the long term climate change trend for rising temperatures, with increasing frequency of heatwaves drying out forests and grasslands and driving reductions in humidity and soil moisture making extreme fireweather and bushfires more frequent and more intense.
Peter Sinclair has put together another educative video gem on the decline of Arctic Sea Ice, and indeed global sea ice. The video mixes together video footage of Lord Monckton from 2009, 2011, and 2013 to show his inconsistency, with the facts and observations from climate scientists on sea ice decline.
Climate scientists interviewed include Dr Walt Meier from the National Snow and Ice Data center, Dr Ken Dunton from University of Texas, Dr Jennifer Francis from Rutgers University, Dr Jeff Masters from the WeatherUnderground, Dr Claire Parkinson from the Goddard Space Flight Center NASA,
The video covers the recent and unusually extensive ice fractures seen in the Beaufort Sea from the beginning of February through March. This highlights that most of this sea ice is seasonal or first year ice. Sea ice extent continues to track well below model predictions for the disintegration of summer sea ice. Sea Ice volume trend is even more stark with a projection of a possible ice free summer as early as 2016.
Those iconaclastic young journalists of the ABC's Hungry Beast program presented this humourus comedy rap - I am a Climate Scientist - during this weeks program (No 28) broadcast on May 11. Written and performed by Dan Illic and Duncun Elms with several Australian climate scientists, including lead IPCC author Professor Roger Jones. The story was titled 'CLIMATE SCIENCE RAP- there are climate change believers and deniers, but what do the climate change scientists say?'
The song is an attack on climate sceptics who continue to deny that climate change is occurring and is being contributed to by human caused emissions. Journalist Andrew Bolt and Radio talkback compare Alan Jones get special mentions in the song.
Getup! is launching proceedings against climate sceptic talk back radio hosts following on from the ABC Mediawatch program on the lack of balance in the climate debate as presented by talk back radio hosts in Australia.
Jonathon Holmes of Mediawatch takes on the lack of balance in the climate change debate on Australian talk back radio dominated by climate sceptic hosts such as Greg Cary and Gary Hardgrave on 4BC, Alan Jones and Chris Smith on 2GB, Jason Morrison, David Oldfield and Michael Smith on 2UE, and Howard Sattler on 6PR.Watch the program broadcast on March 21 and read the transcript at the ABC Mediawatch: Balancing a Hot Debate including extra related material.
People opposed to a carbon tax rallied at noon in Canberra, Melbourne and Brisbane. The protest in Canberra was organised by the Consumers and Taxpayers Assoc Inc. and 2GB broadcaster Chris Smith.
A new Greenpeace report uncovers the multimillion dollar funding and intense lobbying against climate science and climate action by Koch Industries, that eclipses the traditional funding for climate deniers from ExxonMobil and other fossil fuel companies.
Climate criminals come in many shapes and forms including many corporate executives and politicians who fail to take meaningful action to reduce carbon emissions or other climate mitigation action despite being aware of the climate science.
While Australia sizzles, much of Europe, North America, China and Asia has been subjected to snowstorms and freezing weather disrupting trade and transport with climate deniers chortling that global cooling is here. But further north - Eastern Siberia, Alaska, Northern Canada and Greenland, average winter temperatures are actually warmer - caused by the climate pattern known as the Arctic Oscillation.
The Arctic Oscilliation is a winter climate pattern in the Northern Hemisphere defined by difference in air pressure between mid latitude air pressure and the air pressure over the Arctic. When low pressure predominates in the Arctic, the winds confine the extremely cold air and the Arctic Oscillation is called positive. When the pressure system weakens, allowing the cold air to slide south and warmer air to gather in the Arctic, the Arctic Oscillation is said to be negative.
According to the National Snow and Ice Data Center "Over most of the past century, the Arctic Oscillation alternated between its positive and negative phases. Starting in the 1970s, however, the oscillation has tended to stay in the positive phase, causing lower than normal arctic air pressure and higher than normal temperatures in much of the United States and northern Eurasia."
Climate sceptic meteorologist Anthony Watts has written about Global cooling headed our way for the next 30 years? based upon the Daily Mail article - The mini ice age starts here - that put forward 'a global trend towards cooler weather that is likely to last for 20 or 30 years'. The article is based upon their mis-interpretation of the research of prominent IPCC researcher Professor Mojib Latif.
Latif's team published research in the Journal Nature in 2008 regarding natural fluctuations in ocean temperature that could have a bigger impact on global temperature than expected. That cooling in the oceans could on occasion offset global warming. The scientists stressed that the research did not challenge the predicted long-term warming trend.
However Mojib Latif, Professor for Climate Physics at the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences at Kiel University in Germany, told the Guardian newspaper - Leading climate scientist challenges Mail on Sunday's use of his research - that: "It comes as a surprise to me that people would try to use my statements to try to dispute the nature of global warming. I believe in manmade global warming. I have said that if my name was not Mojib Latif it would be global warming."
"The natural variation occurs side by side with the manmade warming. Sometimes it has a cooling effect and can offset this warming and other times it can accelerate it." Mojib Latif said.
Mojib Latif made a key presentation at the World Climate Conference 3, held in Geneva in September 2009 where he conjectured that it "may well happen that you enter a decade or maybe even two, when the temperature cools relative to the present level" but that "the jury is still out about the relative contribution of this internal variability". You can read Key excerpts from Mojib Latif's WCC presentation on Deep Climate. His remarks were reported and misrepresented by science journalists and particularly climate sceptics that we would actually see a decade or two of global cooling.
In an email published by Deep Climate Mojib Latif clarified "what I said is that the cooling in the Atlantic and Pacific may offsset global warming for a decade so that there may be not much of an additional warming. I showed a prediction that was published last year in the science magazine 'nature'."
"I also pointed out that the British group issued a competing forecast for the next decade. They predict that global warming will continue at the rate of the last decades. Thus, and I made this very clear, there is quite some uncertainty about the short-term evolution. Yet we all agree that in the long run, say by 2050 and thereafter, the earth will considerably warm, if we do not considerably reduce global greenhouse gas emissions."
Latif projects a likely average warming of 0.18C in the next decade, and 0.35C in the following decade as part of the overall warming trend - not a trend for cooling.
Meanwhile, we are likely to see further weather records broken in the deep freeze or the sizzling heat, part of weather variability, changing climate patterns and a long term global warming trend that scientists attribute to human caused CO2 emissions. Regions will continue to be affected to varying degrees by regional varying climate patterns like the Arctic Oscillation.
Takver is a citizen journalist from Melbourne who has been writing on Climate Change issues and protests including Rising Sea Level, Ocean acidification, Environmental and social Impacts since 2004.
