Thursday, September 20, 2012

GRACE satellite data shows Antarctica is gaining ice mass

Antarctica is home to 90% of the world's ice mass. Although Antarctic sea ice is currently at a record high and recent research predicts Antarctic land ice will continue to grow during this century, some warmists continue to believe that Antarctica is melting down. Additional evidence shows that the "most vulnerable" portion of Antarctica, the Antarctic Peninsula, has gained up to 45 meters of ice over the past 155 years. Gravitational data from the GRACE satellites also show that the vast majority of Antarctica is gaining, not losing, mass. Trend plots from the GRACE data browser, using all available online data, show that Antarctica has continued to gain mass since the beginning of the mission in 2001:
Trend of ice mass [bottom] for dark orange region over Antarctica. 
Trend of ice mass [bottom] for intermediate orange region over Antarctica
Trend of ice mass [bottom] for light orange region over Antarctica
Trend of ice mass [bottom] for  yellow region over Antarctica
Trend of ice mass [bottom] for light green region over Antarctica
Trend of ice mass [bottom] for aqua region over Antarctica. Note: this small portion of Antarctica is the only region showing a declining trend. 
Related posts Antarctic

Related posts Antarctica

3 comments:

  1. Why not just do one graph for all of Antarctica? Or, for that matter, Antarctica + Greenland?

    (Also, as an aside: what the heck is going on in Canada on this map?)

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    Replies
    1. Because the GRACE data browser doesn't allow you to graph trends by continent, although I might be able to get an approximation using latitude limits. I'll try that.

      According to this data, there has been a large accumulation of ice in NE Canada that offsets a decrease in Greenland.

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  2. Nice post. I've tried playing with the data but I can't match your plots :-(
    What settings did you use to get these plots?

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