"We must get rid of Antarctica"

"We must get rid of the Medieval Warm period" was an early cry from Warmists. The period concerned is of course a complete refutation of Warmism so it had to be "got rid of" somehow. And, with his now discredited "hockeystick" graph, Michael Mann seemed to have done it. When that came unstuck they started to say that the period was just a "local" phenomenon. As there are now findings that it extended to both Argentina and New Zealand, that sure is a big locality!

Meanwhile, another big embarrassment in recent years has been the pesky non-melting of the Antarctic icecap. All observations show it as INCREASING in mass overall. But never fear! A way has now been found around that! And who is in on the fix? None other than that same old statistical faker, Michael Mann. Below is a popular report of the "research" followed by the journal abstract.

What they have done seems pretty clear. They have used one of the old dodges that Prof. Brignell calls "chartmanship". They have taken a distant and unusually cold year and shown that there has been warming since then. Utterly meaningless, of course.

US researchers have pored over data from satellites and weather stations in the biggest ever study of the frozen continent's climate and found it's warming after all. Barry Brook, director of the University of Adelaide's Research Institute for Climate Change and Sustainability, said the finding was alarming. Scientists now estimate the melting of Antarctica's massive ice sheets will cause the world's sea levels to rise by one to two metres by the end of the century.....

Scientists already knew, he said, that the massive ice sheets of western Antarctica were melting, but the study showed they would melt more quickly. The research, contained in Thursday's issue of Nature, was also bad news for climate change in general, Professor Brook said. It had been thought Antarctica's cooling would help restrain global warming by acting as a "cool pack", but this did not appear to be the case.

The US study found that eastern Antarctica - which includes the Australian zone - is getting cooler. But this is outweighed by western Antarctica and the Antarctic peninsula, which are warming. On average the continent is warming, the study found. Over the past 50 years much of Antarctica has been warming at a rate comparable to the rest of the world.

Study co-author Eric Steig from the University of Washington said the satellite data was revealing. "The thing you hear all the time is that Antarctica is cooling and that's not the case," he told Nature. Professor Brook said it had been thought Antarctica was cooling partly because of the hole in the ozone layer, which allowed the hot air out.

SOURCE

Warming of the Antarctic ice-sheet surface since the 1957 International Geophysical Year

By Eric J. Steig, David P. Schneider, Scott D. Rutherford, Michael E. Mann, Josefino C. Comiso & Drew T. Shindell

Abstract

Assessments of Antarctic temperature change have emphasized the contrast between strong warming of the Antarctic Peninsula and slight cooling of the Antarctic continental interior in recent decades1. This pattern of temperature change has been attributed to the increased strength of the circumpolar westerlies, largely in response to changes in stratospheric ozone2. This picture, however, is substantially incomplete owing to the sparseness and short duration of the observations. Here we show that significant warming extends well beyond the Antarctic Peninsula to cover most of West Antarctica, an area of warming much larger than previously reported. West Antarctic warming exceeds 0.1 øC per decade over the past 50 years, and is strongest in winter and spring. Although this is partly offset by autumn cooling in East Antarctica, the continent-wide average near-surface temperature trend is positive. Simulations using a general circulation model reproduce the essential features of the spatial pattern and the long-term trend, and we suggest that neither can be attributed directly to increases in the strength of the westerlies. Instead, regional changes in atmospheric circulation and associated changes in sea surface temperature and sea ice are required to explain the enhanced warming in West Antarctica.

Nature 457, 459-462 (22 January 2008)

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