by Michael F. Cochrane, Ph.D.
“Many climate reports today highlight short-term changes when they fit a broken climate narrative but then ignore or downplay changes when they don’t, often treating them as ‘just the weather’,” theoretical physicist Steven Koonin, former Under Secretary of Science at the Department of Energy during the Obama administration, in a The Wall Street Journal op-ed earlier this year. Such frequent reports relate to polar ice melt and its impact on sea level rise.
Reports of melting polar ice usually fall into this category. It is often considered early evidence for global warming. In the 2021 “Arctic Report Card,” the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) concludes, “Rapid and marked warming continues to drive the development of the Arctic environment.”
The authors of the NOAA report sheet recorded the change in the mass of the Greenland Ice Sheet (GIS) from September 1, 2020 to August 31, 2021, reporting a total loss of 85 gigatons ( Gt) plus or minus 16 Gt (one gigaton is about the weight of 1 cubic kilometer of water). Although the authors note that GIS’s 85 Gt annual mass loss is smaller than the 264 Gt/year average loss between 2002 and 2021, they still conclude, “the iceberg has now lost nearly mass as every year since 1998, with record ice loss years of 2012 and 2019). … Ice loss is exposing land, adding significant amounts of fresh water to the oceans and raising sea levels globally.”
“While a warming globe could eventually be the main cause of the shrinking of Greenland’s ice,” Koonin admitshowever, “natural cycles of temperature and currents in the North Atlantic spanning decades have had a much more significant influence since 1900. Those cycles, along with a recent slowdown here, leading us to believe that the next few decades will be even further, perhaps slowing ice loss considerably. “
More recently, evidence of a significant slowdown of ice loss in GIS came with a report from the climate website electroverse.net, where Cap Allon announced record 7 Gt profit in the surface ice in just one day, June 18, 2022. Using data from Denmark Polar Gate, an Arctic ice and climate monitoring resource, Allon recorded that “Impressive surface mass balance (SMB) results…have been posted on the Greenland ice sheet all season”, but the level The June 18 record increase of 7 Gt is very unusual, “especially when you consider that the glacier is going to lose so much mass this time of year. “. (Polar Portal explains, “Terms surface mass balance used to describe the isolation gain and surface melting of the ice sheet — that is, excluding the loss that occurs when glaciers form icebergs and melts in response to relatively warm ocean water . “
As can be seen in this chart from the Danish Meteorological Institute (DMI), the increase in ice this season has pushed the Greenland Ice Sheet’s SMB above the 1981–2010 average for this time of year:
The report concludes that this year’s increase is not unusual. SMBs for the years 2016 to 2018 show that the annual range of SMBs is consistently larger than average:
The National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) has similar findings, reporting last year that the amount of surface ice melt and total melt day area for GIS in late spring 2021 were below averages. from 1981 to 2010. “Snow and rain (except runoff) added mass to the ice sheet. As of June 20 [2021]The total increase in the volume of the ice sheet since September 2020 is slightly above average. “
The importance of monitoring and recording changes in the SMBs of polar ice sheets is not simply providing evidence of a warming planet, but also for trying to predict the extent to which these polar ice sheets will be affected. This change contributes to sea level rise. Koonin, in his 2021 book, Insecurity: What does climate science tell us, what doesn’t, and why it mattersacknowledges that global warming will indeed put more water into the oceans, leading to sea level rise, but warns that any projections of future sea level rise “largely depend on to the amount of land ice that melts as temperatures rise, along with the expansion of warming oceans. “
Citing recent work on ice mass changes of ice, Koonin, points out in Unstable that “the contribution from glacier melt has decreased slightly since 1900 and is now the same as it was fifty years ago; contribution from Greenland reached a minimum around 1985 and is not higher now than it was in 1935”.
His view is that the predictability of future global sea level rise is uncertain because of two main factors: the uncertain dynamics of the ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica, as well as uncertainty. inherent in the temperature predictions of global climate models.
It is not surprising that a scientist emphasizes the importance of uncertainty in drawing conclusions from observational data. After all, the scientific method – based on observations, hypotheses, and experiments (where possible) – assumes that any conclusions drawn from this process are, by definition, uncertain. However, governmental organizations such as NOAA and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) continue to put their findings and conclusions on the ground, requiring media coverage. believe them as if they were absolutely certain.
Acknowledging the uncertainty surrounding climate science will lead to a strong sense of humility. Scientists are not advocates. They must provide policymakers with the best evidence, but do so humbly, acknowledging that their conclusions are likely to have a major impact, not just on the world economy, but also for the development of billions of vulnerable people.Michael Cochrane, PhD, Engineering Manager and Systems Engineering, a defense and technology reporter for World News Group, founder of Value Functional Analysis and Contributing Writer for Cornwall Alliance for Creative Management.
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