Study concludes Antarctica is gaining ice

[Robert]

http://arstechnica.co.uk/science/20...arctica-is-gaining-ice-rather-than-losing-it/

While there’s no question that many key outlet glaciers, which drain the ice sheet, are shrinking, there are other factors to consider. Is a warming ocean and atmosphere bringing more snow inland to replenish the ice sheets? Is the interior of the ice sheet deflating like a squeezed tube of toothpaste, complicating analysis of changing outlet glaciers?

Putting it all together, published estimates of total mass change have ranged from slight gains to large losses, all with pretty significant error bars.

A new study published in the Journal of Glaciology by a team led by NASA researcher Jay Zwallyproduces a surprising and controversial new estimate of large mass gains. Zwally's team has been working on satellite measurements of ice height for some time, but this estimate is significantly different from even their own previous work.

 

[Robert]

And yet...

The planet continues to set global temperature records and not in a good way. According to the United Kingdom’s Met Office, the Earth’s surface temperature will reach 1°C above pre-industrial levels this year for the first time.

The Met Office’s Hadley Center for Climate Science, in conjunction with the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit, based its estimate on temperatures from January through September, which show the global mean surface temperature at 1.02°C above pre-industrial levels. The margin of error for this temperature measurement is 0.11°C.

http://arstechnica.co.uk/science/20...-warming-marker-this-year-for-the-first-time/

 

[Robert]

And back at the top end of Earth:

Its floating ice shelf had been pretty stable until about 2003, when a big chunk cracked off. From there it fell back for about a decade, and then in 2012 one of the two main lobes of the shelf lost contact with the glacier, causing further retreat. An astounding 95 percent of the ice shelf has been lost since 2002—and ice shelves help to hold back the glacial ice behind them.

Green lines show the loss of Zachariae's floating ice shelf. The glacier flows from the left side of the image.
Jeremie Mouginot/UCI
Zachariae’s grounding line has retreated 7km since 1992, and half of that happened after 2010 as the rate of retreat picked up greatly. The glacier has been thinning faster since then, too. A few kilometers inland from the grounding line, the surface is now dropping away by about 5m per year as the glacier deflates. That came with a 50-percent velocity increase between 2000 and 2014, and again, half that acceleration came in the last three years.

http://arstechnica.co.uk/science/2015/11/another-greenland-glacier-is-taking-a-beating/