And now it's global COOLING! Record return of Arctic ice cap as it grows by 60% in a yearAlmost a million more square miles of ocean covered with ice than in 2012
BBC reported in 2007 global warming would leave Arctic ice-free in summer by 2013
Publication of UN climate change report suggesting global warming caused by humans pushed back to later this month
Global cooling: Arctic ice caps grows by 60% against global warming predictions | Mail Online
View attachment 67153507
I hope you are right. I'm not thrilled with the prospect of 100 degree summers in Upstate NY. If I wanted that crap I would have stayed in Atlanta. But I am shocked by your graphic because I have been told those polar caps are melting away.
Polar ice sheets melting faster than ever | Environment | DW.DE | 04.02.2013
Polar ice sheets melting faster than ever
The polar ice caps have melted faster in last 20 years than in the last 10,000. A comprehensive satellite study confirms that the melting ice caps are raising sea levels at an accelerating rate. The polar regions are important drivers of the world's climate. When the "everlasting ice" melts at an increasing rate, the rest of the world is affected. Global sea levels are rising, dark meltwater pools absorb warmth from the sun which white ice would reflect back into space. Fresh water flows into the sea, changing ocean currents and the living conditions for marine organisms. For 20 years satellites have been monitoring earth's biggest ice shields on Greenland and in the Antarctic, using different technologies from radar to gravity measurements. In the past, the uncoordinated publication of individual one-off measurements led to confusion, especially with regard to the state of the Antarctic ice. A new study, supported by NASA and European Space Agency ESA combines the data from different satellite missions. "It's the first time all the people who have estimated changes in the size of the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets using satellites over the past 20 years have got together to produce a single result," Andrew Shepherd from the University of Leeds in the UK explained in an interview with DW.
Satellite monitoring ends confusion
"Thanks to the accuracy of our data set, we are now able to say with confidence that Antarctica has lost ice for the whole of the past 20 years. In addition to the relative proportions of ice that have been lost in the northern and southern hemispheres, we can also see there's been a definitive acceleration of ice loss in last 20 years. So together Antarctica and Greenland are now contributing three times as much ice to sea levels as they were 20 years ago," says the Professor of Earth Observation. According to the study, melting ice from both poles has been responsible for a fifth of the global rise in sea levels since 1992, 11 millimeters in all. The rest was caused by the thermal expansion of the warming ocean, the melting of mountain glaciers, small Arctic ice caps and groundwater mining. The share of the polar ice melt, however, is rising.
Greenland is melting fastest
The pattern of change differs considerably between the Arctic and the Antarctic. Two thirds of the ice loss is happening in Greenland. "The rate of ice loss from Greenland has increased almost five-fold since the mid-1990s", says Erik Ivins, who coordinated the project for NASA. Although the Greenland ice sheet is only about one tenth the size of Antarctica, today it is contributing twice as much ice to sea levels, according to Shepherd: "It's certainly the larger player, probably just because it is at a more equatorial latitude, further from the North pole than Antarctica from the South pole." The ice on Greenland is also melting on the surface, because of increasing air temperatures.