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Originally Posted by The Fonz
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I may be wrong, but I think that is a little misleading. The report is much more complex than being suggested.
"We’re essentially in agreement with other studies that show an increase in ice discharge in the Antarctic Peninsula and the Thwaites and Pine Island region of West Antarctica,” said Jay Zwally, a glaciologist with NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and lead author of the study, which was published on Oct. 30 in the Journal of Glaciology. “Our main disagreement is for East Antarctica and the interior of West Antarctica – there, we see an ice gain that exceeds the losses in the other areas.” Zwally added that his team “measured small height changes over large areas, as well as the large changes observed over smaller areas.”
They are stating that there are gains in one region of Antarctica, but losses in others. The losses are glacial ice and the gains are in snow pack. Surface snow pack is more likely to generate runoff than glacier ice. Where we need to see growth is in the glaciers and not the pack snow. It is the loss of that glacial ice that is alarming.
“If the losses of the Antarctic Peninsula and parts of West Antarctica continue to increase at the same rate they’ve been increasing for the last two decades, the losses will catch up with the long-term gain in East Antarctica in 20 or 30 years -- I don’t think there will be enough snowfall increase to offset these losses.”
This is the concerning part. While there has been snow pack gains, it has not been enough to significantly counter the losses. More concerning is the inability to determine the hole in the math attribution in the IPCC report.
“The good news is that Antarctica is not currently contributing to sea level rise, but is taking 0.23 millimeters per year away,” Zwally said. “But this is also bad news. If the 0.27 millimeters per year of sea level rise attributed to Antarctica in the IPCC report is not really coming from Antarctica, there must be some other contribution to sea level rise that is not accounted for.”
The report suggests Antarctic sheet has achieved some level of balance in gains and losses, but the hole in the math suggests that if there is a shift to a negative imbalance, we're in even greater trouble than anticipated.