I bagged a long sought after interview late last March, with Jeff Severinghaus (we have a connection I’ll explain tomorrow) of Scripps Oceanographic Institute.
Big Ice guy.
Jeff has some current research that I’ll be examining in coming videos, but as I spoke to Jeff he was just returning from a stay in Antarctica, so I asked him to summarize the best assessments.
Then of course, Covid hit, and my county in Michigan got devastated by a dam failure, and a whole load of the madness that is 2020 got in the way – but I finally came back around to this.
I matched Jeff’s clips with some from Richard Alley and Eric Rignot, well known to readers here. They spoke to me in New Orleans in 2017.
I had also talked to Susheel Adusumilli, also of Scripps, and I featured prominently the new work from Stef Lhermitte, of Delft University of Technology. Then I wrapped it with a summary from Twila Moon of the National Snow and Ice Data Center.
My Yale Climate Connections colleague Karen Kirk also had a pass at this research as well, her @CC_Yale piece:
Karen Kirk in Yale Climate Connections:
Read the rest of this entry »
Climate researchers have long monitored ice sheet dynamics in the Amundsen Sea, focusing specifically on the Thwaites and Pine Island glaciers. The two sit side by side on Antarctica’s western peninsula covering an area roughly the size of nine U.S. coastal states stretching from Maine to Maryland. The two glaciers alone store ice that could account for about 4 feet (1.2 meters) of global sea level rise. Their “seaboard” location may help bring increased public attention and interest to the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, which if it melted could raise seas by a catastrophic 11 feet (3.4 meters).An international effort led by the British Antarctic Survey recently published two papers (Hogan et al. and Jordan et al.) showing the first detailed maps of the seafloor at the edge of the Thwaites Glacier. The team mapped deep submarine channels that have been funneling warm water to this vulnerable location. High-resolution imagery pinpoints the pathways that allow warm water to undermine the ice shelf. Lead author Kelly Hogan of the British Antarctic Survey says the findings will improve estimates of sea-level rise from Thwaites Glacier. “We can go ahead and make those calculations about how much warm water can get under the ice and melt it,” Hogan said.
The other researchers, led by Stef Lhermitte, found stark visual confirmation of glacier disintegration using decades of time-lapse satellite imagery. Their work sheds light on the accelerating feedback process, wherein the rapid loss of ice is opening the door to ever-increasing melting.
How Delusional is Lamar Smith?
December 1, 2015
Citing unnamed, (ie nonexistent) “experts”, Inquisitor Lamar Smith of the House Science Committee engages in hallucinatory arm waving in attempting to convince Miami residents that the water around their ankles is completely normal.
Office of Lamar Smith, Chairman, House Committee on Science, Space and Technology:
Dec 1, 2015Press ReleaseWashington, D.C. – Science, Space, and Technology Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) today released the following statement after President Obama delivered a speech this morning before the U.N. climate change conference in Paris blaming climate change for recent flooding in Miami, Florida. The president stated, “You go down to Miami and when it’s flooding at high tide on a sunny day, the fish are swimming through the middle of the streets, there’s costs to that.”
Chairman Smith: “The president’s statement that Miami flooding is linked to climate change is entirely false and in fact disputed by meteorologists at the National Weather Service. The experts have reported that the lunar cycle and wind patterns are to blame for unusually high floods in Miami, not climate change. The fact is there is little evidence that climate change causes extreme weather events. The president is ignoring the facts and misleading the American people in order to advance his extreme climate change agenda.”
2000 years of sea level: Kemp et al
DarkSnowProject Manhattan: The Video
May 14, 2013
On April 21, 2013, the Dark Snow Project brought a bit of Greenland to Manhattan, to illustrate the importance of this summer’s planned expedition to sample Greenland ice. It kicked off the last leg of our historic citizen-science crowd funding campaign.
If this final fundraising push is successful, I’ll be traveling in June to the Greenland Ice sheet as part of a scientific expedition to investigate the steady darkening and increasing melt of that important ice sheet. Bill Mckibben will be coming along to write this up for Rolling Stone, as well.
There are 3 ways to help out, if you haven’t already. One, you can go to Darksnowproject.org, and make a donation at the bottom of the page. Two, you can text darksnow to 50555, or Three, you can go to the IndieGoGo crowdsourcing site.
Climate Denial Crock of the Week 