Friday, 23 January 2009

The warming of Antarctica...



The top picture shows the geographic distribution of Antarctic volcanoes . (Mount Erebus centre above, and above left Mt. Erebus being admired by a penguin.)
The lower right hand picture is one of several published by NASA, showing satellite observations of temperatures recently obtained and analysed concluding that the sub-continent is warming. The usual suspects, ie, CO2 and depleted ozone are presumed guilty... more here...
The recently honoured Watt's up With That? (Winner, Science blog 2008) has a problem with NASA's paper and asks quite politely and with respect whether new volcanic activity may have much more to do with west Antarctica's warming than the twin villains of ozone depletion and CO2...
... the entire western side of the Antarctic continent and peninsula is dotted with volcanoes . Recent discovery of new volcanic activity isn’t mentioned in the paper at all. From January 2008, the first evidence of a volcanic eruption from beneath Antarctica’s ice sheet has been discovered by members of the British Antarctic Survey.
The volcano on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet began erupting some 2,000 years ago and remains active to this day. Using airborne ice-sounding radar, scientists discovered a layer of ash produced by a ’subglacial’ volcano. It extends across an area larger than Wales. The volcano is located beneath the West Antarctic ice sheet in the Hudson Mountains at
latitude 74.6°South, longitude 97°West..
More to this warming pattern than meets the uncritical eye of NASA perhaps ? More here...
...and for a snapshot of the general public's attitude to global warming in terms of importance, see here...
...and for IPPC cooking of the temperature books, see here...
...and now we find the apparent warming is all based on decidely dodgy data from Harry...more, here...


No comments: