Scientists around the world are perplexed over the fact that sea ice is growing in Antarctica despite the prevailing consensus in the establishment scientific community that the climate is warming.
In fact, Antarctic sea ice last week hit an all-time high. But the computer models that international scientists have developed say it should be in decline,
the Daily Mail reports.
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What gives?
The NASA-funded America’s National Snow And Ice Data Center reported that ice around the southern continent covers about 16 million square kilometers,
according to the Mail, more than 2.1 million more than is usual for this time of year.
A report issued last year by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said that all computer models indicate the Antarctic ice sheet should be in decline, not increasing.
"There is low confidence in the scientific understanding of the observed increase in Antarctic sea ice extent since 1979, due to… incomplete and competing scientific explanations for the causes of change," said the report, known as the Fifth Assessment Report.
Professor Judith Curry, head of climate science at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, told the Mail that arguments that the ice growth may actually be caused by climate change make no sense.
"We do not have a quantitative, predictive understanding of the rise in Antarctic sea ice extent," she told the Mail. In fact, Curry said, long-term cycles in ocean temperatures were responsible for a significant proportion of the ice decline in the Arctic — a process that may be starting to reverse.
And due to a "pause" in which world average temperatures have not risen for more than 16 years, it's the Arctic ice decline alone that has been pushed as the most important evidence for continued global warming. Many scientists have merely brushed off the fact of ice growth at the other pole.
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