This is the third article on Global Warming and Antarctica by Cliff Harris and was carried in the Coeur d’Alene Press on Monday April 28, 2008.

Weather Gems

In concluding our three-part weekly series on “global cooling,” a Jan. 12, 2008, peer-reviewed paper in AGU (American Geophysical Union) found “A doubling in snow accumulation in the western Antarctic Peninsula since 1850.” The abstract of the paper by Thomas, E. R., G. J. Marshall, and J. R. McConnell, states: We present results from a new medium depth (136 meters) ice core drilled in a high accumulation site (73.59¬ƒS, 70.36¬ƒW) on the south-western Antarctic Peninsula during 2007. Other records are also available that confirm a DOUBLING of the snowfall accumulation in the region since the 1850s, including the Gomez Chronicles.

A February 2007 study reveals Antarctica is not following predicted global warming models. Excerpt: “A new report on climate over the world’s southernmost continent shows that temperatures during the late 20th century did not climb as had been predicted by many global climate models.” The research was led by David Bromwich, professor of atmospheric sciences in the department of geography, and researcher with the Byrd Polar Research Center at Ohio State University.

Dr. Duncan Wingham, professor of climate physics at University College London and director of the Center for Polar Observation and Modeling, has presented evidence that Antarctic ice is growing. According to a Dec. 15, 2006, article in Canada’s National Post, “Early last year at a European Union Space Conference in Brussels, for example, Dr. Wingham revealed that data from a European Space Agency satellite showed Antarctic thinning was no more common than thickening, and concluded that the spectacular collapse of the ice shelves on the Antarctic Peninsula was much more likely to have followed natural current fluctuations than global warming. One cannot be certain, because packets of heat in the atmosphere do not come conveniently labeled ‘the contribution of anthropogenic warming,’” Wingham said, noting that the evidence is not “favorable to the notion we are seeing the results of global warming.” Wingham and his colleagues found that 72 percent of the ice sheet covering the entire land mass of Antarctica is growing at the rate of 5 millimeters per year. “That makes Antarctica a sink, not a source, of ocean water. According to their best estimates, Antarctica will “lower global sea levels by 0.08 millimeters per year,” the National Post article reported.

Statistician Dr. Bjorn Lomborg, author of The Skeptical Environmentalist and professor at the Copenhagen Business School, questioned former Vice President Al Gore’s claims about Antarctica in a Jan. 21, 2007, Wall Street Journal op-ed. “[Gore] considers Antarctica the canary in the mine, but again doesn’t tell the full story. He presents pictures from the 2 percent of Antarctica that is dramatically warming and ignores the 98 percent that has largely cooled over the past 35 years. The U.N. panel estimates that Antarctica will actually increase its snow mass this century. Similarly, Mr. Gore points to shrinking sea ice in the Northern Hemisphere, but doesn’t mention that sea ice in the Southern Hemisphere is increasing.

“Shouldn’t we hear those facts?” Lomborg added.

UN scientist Dr. Madhav L. Khandekar, a retired Environment Canada scientist and an expert IPCC reviewer, noted in 2007 that the Southern Hemisphere is COOLING. Dr. Khandekar wrote on Aug. 6, 2007: “In the Southern Hemisphere, the land-area mean temperature has slowly but surely declined in the last few years. The city of Buenos Aires in Argentina received several centimeters of snowfall in early July, and the last time it snowed in Buenos Aires was in 1918! Most of Australia experienced one of its coldest months of June this year. Several other locations in the Southern Hemisphere have experienced lower temperatures in the last few years. Further, the sea surface temperatures over world oceans are slowly declining since mid-1998, according to a recent world-wide analysis of ocean surface temperatures.”

Last, but not least, Ivy League Geologist Dr. Robert Giegengack, the chair of department of earth and environmental science at the University of Pennsylvania, explained that the Earth has been warming for about 20,000 years, and humans have only been collecting data for about 200 years. “For most of earth’s history, the globe has been warmer than it has been for the last 200 years. It has only rarely been cooler,” Giegengack said according to a February 2007 article. Giegengack further explained that extremely long geologic timescales reveal that “only about 5 percent of that time has been characterized by conditions on Earth that were so cold that the poles could support masses of permanent ice.”

If you have any questions on our “global cooling” series, go to our Web site at http://www.longrangeweather.com/.

A “special thanks” goes out to our friend and colleague Paul Berenson, ‘berenson@cox.net’ for all his efforts in putting together this rather lengthy report on “the earth’s ever-changing climate.”

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