A bit of climate sanity - doing the math

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From [Anthony Watts](http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/05/20/antarcticas-ice-losses-on-the-rise-with-a-sanity-check/) comes this breath of fresh air. There is a much publicized news story about how the Antarctic Ice is melting at a rate of 159 billion tons per year: >**Antarctica’s ice losses on the rise – with a sanity check**
From Geophysical Research Letters and the University of Leeds: > > >***Three years of observations show that the Antarctic ice sheet is now losing 159 billion tonnes of ice each year — twice as much as when it was last surveyed***. See below for some sanity check calculations on why 159 billion tonnes really isn’t much more than a flyspeck in the scheme of things. > > > First of all: > They used measurements collected by the European Space Agency’s CryoSat-2 satellite mission, which carries an altimeter specially designed for this task. > > In sharp contrast to past altimeter missions, CryoSat-2 surveys virtually all the Antarctic continent, reaching to within 215 kilometres of the South Pole and leading to a fivefold increase in the sampling of coastal regions where today’s ice losses are concentrated. > The new satellite is looking at a much larger area -- of course, the numbers are going to be higher. Second and final - the sanity check: > If one cubic kilometer of water (i.e., one gigatonne of water) is spread evenly over the entire 361 million square kilometers, the thickness of the new layer of water will be given by: > >
1 km³ / 361 x 106 km² = 2.78 x 10-6 meters = 2.78 microns
> > Or, in terms of gigatonnes: > >
1 Gt x (1 km³/Gt) / 361 x 106 km² = 2.78 x 10-6 meters = 2.78 microns / Gt
> > That is, one cubic kilometer of water (i.e., one gigatonne of water) will add less than 3 millionths of a meter to the oceans! > Sure, there is melting going on -- the antarctic ice will be all gone in 169,811 years. And this is all you have? This is your crisis?

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This page contains a single entry by DaveH published on May 20, 2014 10:01 AM.

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