Quote Originally Posted by Hootad Binky View Post
Greenland’s ice loss accelerating rapidly, gravity-measuring satellites reveal

August 10, 2006

AUSTIN, Texas—A new analysis of data from twin satellites has revealed that the melting of Greenland’s ice sheet has increased dramatically in the past few years, with much of the loss occurring primarily along one shoreline potentially affecting weather in Western Europe.

The loss of ice has been occurring about five times faster from Greenland’s southeastern region in the past two years than in the previous year and a half. The dramatic changes were documented during a University of Texas at Austin study of Greenland’s mass between 2002 and 2005.

more at:

 Greenland’s ice loss accelerating rapidly, gravity-measuring satellites reveal | The University of Texas at Austin

Antarctic ice cap melting faster than first thought

January 15, 2008 12:00pm
  • study shows Antarctica melting faster than thought
  • Huge influx of fresh water could alter ocean currents
  • NASA geoscientist 'astonished' by alarming new data
The most comprehensive study to date of Antarctica's ice confirms growing concern that the ice cap is melting faster than predicted.

The implications are that the global sea level will rise faster than expected, while a huge influx of freshwater into the salty oceans could alter ocean currents.

Antarctica holds 90 per cent of Earth's ice.

According to the new findings, snowfall is topping up ice in the continent's interior and East Antarctic has held its own.

But West Antarctica and the Antarctic Peninsula lost nearly 200 billion tonnes of ice in 2006 alone.

That is 75 per cent more than losses in 1996 and the equivalent of a global sea level rise of more than half a millimetre, claim international scientists led by NASA geoscientist Eric Rignot, also with the University of California, Irvine (UCI).

"Losses are concentrated along narrow channels occupied by outlet glaciers and are caused by ongoing and past glacier acceleration," the team wrote in the online edition of Nature Geoscience.

They based their conclusions on satellite data obtained in 1996, 2000 and 2006.

According to Dr Rignot, the results showed that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had underestimated the impact of polar melting in its predictions of possible sea level rises next century.

"Each time I look at some new data, I am astonished," he said.

Until now, it has been unclear whether snowfall in the interior kept pace with coastal melting, in terms of the overall mass of Antarctic ice.

But for Hobart glaciologist Ian Allison - with the Australian Antarctic Division and the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Co-operative Research Centre - the new findings settle the matter.
"This work suggests that the ice flow is accelerating," Dr Allison said.

more at:

Antarctic ice cap melting faster than first thought | NEWS.com.au
Obviously someone is fooling someone here. I wonder how almost everything I have read states just the opposite. Here is one of them.

Recent cold snap helping Arctic sea ice, scientists find
Last Updated: Friday, February 15, 2008 | 10:17 AM ET
CBC News

There's an upside to the extreme cold temperatures northern Canadians have endured in the last few weeks: scientists say it's been helping winter sea ice grow across the Arctic, where the ice shrank to record-low levels last year.

Temperatures have stayed well in the -30s C and -40s C range since late January throughout the North, with the mercury dipping past -50 C in some areas.

Satellite images are showing that the cold spell is helping the sea ice expand in coverage by about 2 million square kilometres, compared to the average winter coverage in the previous three years.

"It's nice to know that the ice is recovering," Josefino Comiso, a senior research scientist with the Cryospheric Sciences Branch of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Centre in Maryland, told CBC News on Thursday.

"That means that maybe the perennial ice would not go down as low as last year."

Canadian scientists are also noticing growing ice coverage in most areas of the Arctic, including the southern Davis Strait and the Beaufort Sea.

"Clearly, we're seeing the ice coverage rebound back to more near normal coverage for this time of year," said Gilles Langis, a senior ice forecaster with the Canadian Ice Service in Ottawa.
Winter sea ice could keep expanding

The cold is also making the ice thicker in some areas, compared to recorded thicknesses last year, Lagnis added.

"The ice is about 10 to 20 centimetres thicker than last year, so that's a significant increase," he said.

If temperatures remain cold this winter, Langis said winter sea ice coverage will continue to expand.

But he added that it's too soon to say what impact this winter will have on the Arctic summer sea ice, which reached its lowest coverage ever recorded in the summer of 2007.

That was because the thick multi-year ice pack that survives a summer melt has been decreasing in recent years, as well as moving further south. Langis said the ice pack is currently located about 130 kilometres from the Mackenzie Delta, about half the distance from where it was last year.

The polar regions are a concern to climate specialists studying global warming, since those regions are expected to feel the impact of climate change sooner and to a greater extent than other areas.

Sea ice in the Arctic helps keep those regions cool by reflecting sunlight that might otherwise be absorbed by darker ocean or land surfaces.
And here is another abstract, Antarctic ice grows to record levels & Over 500 scientists published studies countering global warming fears: Antarctic ice grows to record levels

Or take this article about the ice shelf on Greenland. In other words, it's cyclical.

Current Melting Of Greenland's Ice Mimicks 1920s-1940s Event

ScienceDaily (Dec. 13, 2007) — Two researchers here spent months scouring through old expedition logs and reports, and reviewing 70-year-old maps and photos before making a surprising discovery: They found that the effects of the current warming and melting of Greenland's glaciers that has alarmed the world's climate scientists occurred in the decades following an abrupt warming in the 1920s......................................
And as for arctic ice melt, that too is cyclical, and now we know that it is caused by switching oceanic currents AND wind patterns. This NASA paper so states it.

Nghiem said the rapid decline in winter perennial ice the past two years was caused by unusual winds. "Unusual atmospheric conditions set up wind patterns that compressed the sea ice, loaded it into the Transpolar Drift Stream and then sped its flow out of the Arctic," he said. When that sea ice reached lower latitudes, it rapidly melted in the warmer waters.

"The winds causing this trend in ice reduction were set up by an unusual pattern of atmospheric pressure that began at the beginning of this century," Nghiem said.
And this chart shows that arctic ice is righ back up to normal again.

And here, Antarctic Ice: the Cold Truth