Yes, climate actually does change, with vectors and degrees of alarm running hot and cold based upon all sorts of anecdotal hypotheses involving poorly understood influences and interactions of numerous dyssynchronous variables.
So don’t become too excited either way to learn that a melting Antarctic ice sheet doesn’t appear likely to flood the beachfront of Al Gore’s $9 million ocean view property in Montecito, California, he bought in 2009 any time soon.
The sprawling $11.75 million Martha’s Vinyard estates owned by John Kerry and the Obamas, and Bill and Melinda Gates’ $43 million beach house in Del Mar, California, look to be quite safe for a while as well.
According to a study published in Science China Earth Sciences, the Antarctic Ice Sheet (AIS) has recently shown signs of record-breaking growth of 108 gigatons per year between 2021 and 2023, a dramatic reversal of annual 142 gigaton losses reported over the previous decade (2011-2020).
Satellite data taken from GRACE (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment) and GRACE-FO (GRACE Follow-On) missions, which measure changes in Earth’s gravity field to track ice mass fluctuations found that much of the previous loss was driven by the destabilization of glaciers in West Antarctica and the Wilkes Land–Queen Mary Land (WL-QML) region of East Antarctica.
Researchers from Tongji University and other institutions determined that most of that mass loss and recovery was attributed to changes in ice discharge (27% of loss) and surface melting (73% of loss) in four major glacier basins in the WL-QML region — Totten, Moscow University, Denman and Vincennes Bay — with East Antarctica showing particularly strong signs of growth through increases in precipitation leading to an accumulation of snow and ice.
In the “big picture,” whereas the Antarctic Ice Sheet which holds more than half of the world’s freshwater plays a crucial role in global sea-level rise, the unexpected mass gain only calculates out to offset global sea level rise by about 0.3 millimeters per year, this nearly cancels out an average 3.4 mm increase over a previous decade.
Regarding sea ice, short-term trends in the Southern Ocean, such as those observed, can readily occur from natural variability of the atmosphere and partly enclosed Antarctic Ocean system.
Antarctic sea ice showed a slight increase in overall extent from 1979 to 2014, with some areas, such as the western part of the Antarctic Peninsula experiencing a decrease strongly influenced by winds and ocean currents around the continent.
In addition to periodic temperature changes, cool fresh water from melting ice shelves changes water salinity and density, in turn influencing surface weather patterns.
Since oceans are constantly evaporating and changing the temperature and humidity of the surrounding air, they are key to regulating rainfall that converts to surface snow and ice.
So, is there any evidence that the recent recovery of previous losses of Antarctic surface ice mass represents a permanent reversal, or that the Northern Hemisphere isn’t experiencing a slight warming trend just as it has countless times before humans invented smokestacks and SUVs?
Of course not.
But don’t expect to find any wealthy climate alarmists selling their beachfront property for bargain prices over fear of rising oceans either.
Larry Bell is an endowed professor of space architecture at the University of Houston where he founded the Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture and the graduate space architecture program. His latest of 12 books is "Architectures Beyond Boxes and Boundaries: My Life By Design" (2022). Read Larry Bell's Reports — More Here.