Reuters “Fact Checks” Antarctic Sea Ice Climate Claims – Watts Up With That?
Essay by Eric Worrall
Greensplaining why more ice means the world is getting warmer.
Antarctic sea ice extent is 17% higher today than it was in 1979. Ice doesn’t lie, but climate scientists do.https://t.co/jEmTvGVPdghttps://t.co/cj0675DQBt pic.twitter.com/ivUCtobivp
This tweet from Tony appears to have stirred up establishment media greens;
“Antarctic sea ice extent is 17% higher today than it was in 1979. Ice doesn’t lie, but climate scientists do,” the text reads.
An NSIDC spokesperson told Reuters via email that Antarctic sea ice extent on Dec. 24, 1979, was 7.38 million square kilometres, and on Dec. 24, 2024, it was 8.28 million square kilometres. This is an increase of 12.2%.
Source Reuters / Tony Heller
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However, NSIDC data also show that there was more, opens new tab Antarctic sea ice on the majority of days in 1979 compared with days in 2024. …
“It would be a bit like saying that because a sports team won the first game of the year in 2025 but lost the first game of the year in 2020, they had got better, even if they were bottom of the league in 2025 and top of the league in 2020,” she said.
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Antarctic sea ice is particularly variable, and has defied attempts to connect its long-term trend to climate change, the NSIDC spokesperson said.
“In the absence of a clear climate reason for the change, many scientists looked to oceanic changes as the cause.”
But uncertainties about Antarctic sea ice’s relationship with global temperatures do not invalidate evidence of climate change globally.
Screen said: “Even if sea ice returns in the Antarctic, it doesn’t disprove other indicators of climate change. Warming oceans, melting glaciers, and the dramatic loss of Arctic sea ice are just some of the many signs of a warming planet.”
Tony Heller responded to this Reuters “fact check”.
Total BS by @Reuters . Ten years ago Antarctic sea ice was at a record high, and the same government #ClimateScam professionals tried to blame global warming. https://t.co/A3KThcuJzo https://t.co/AXWl4drHyU pic.twitter.com/ZHULqibuC7
When they mentioned uncertainty and sea ice variability, Reuters forgot to mention back in 2014 record Antarctic sea ice was blamed on global warming.
Antarctic winter sea ice extent sets new record in 2014
BY MICHON SCOTT REVIEWED BY TED SCAMBOS PUBLISHED OCTOBER 7, 2014
DETAILS
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It’s not unreasonable to wonder how, if the planet is warming, Antarctic winter sea ice can set record highs. As the NSIDC release explains, Antarctica’s sea ice growth spurt may be down to stronger winds and slightly fresher sea surface water around the margins of the continent’s melting ice shelves.
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Winds probably did not act alone to spur so much sea ice growth; melting land ice may have played a role. Most of Antarctica’s ice lies in the ice sheets that cover the continent, and in recent decades, that ice has been melting. Along the coastline, ice shelves float on the ocean surface, and much of the recent melt may be driven by warm water from the deep ocean rising and making contact with ice shelf undersides.
How does the melting of land ice matter to sea ice formation? The resulting meltwater is fresher than the seawater. As it mixes with the seawater, the meltwater makes the nearby seawater slightly less dense, and slightly closer to the freezing point than the ocean water below. This less dense seawater spreads out across the ocean surface surrounding the continent, forming a stable pool of surface water that is close to the freezing point, and close to the ice onto which it could freeze.
So as counterintuitive as expanding winter Antarctic sea ice may appear on a warming planet, it may actually be a manifestation of recent warming. “Both the Arctic and the Antarctic are responding to climate change, and both have areas that are warming rapidly,” explains NSIDC lead scientist Ted Scambos. “But Antarctic sea ice is responding to wind shifts and ocean changes in an unexpected way, and we’re still trying to fully understand it.”
“It may actually be” doesn’t fill me with a sense of certainty.
If melting land ice in the Antarctic caused sea ice to peak, due to melting fresh water ice reducing the salinity of adjacent sea water, why didn’t melting land ice in the Arctic cause Arctic sea ice to peak? Or does the melting land ice effect only work in Southern latitudes? It is all very well to talk about the Southern ocean being bigger, but shouldn’t the concentration of nearby land ice allegedly melting into the landlocked Arctic ocean cause even more sea ice to form?
If sea ice is so poorly understood and variable, and the connection to global warming so ambiguous, why have we been subject to years of claims that runaway global warming is going to flood all the coastal cities and melt the polar ice caps?
Climategate 2 Email 0700.txt (20/03/1998):
EC Meeting on Polar Climate Research
Copenhagen 12-13 March 1998
DISCUSSION
On future challenges for the polar regions
Discussion Panel : A Ghazi, J. Thiede, O. Orheim
Participants : L Anderson, K Briffa, H Decleir, M Fily, T Friborg, A Hakon Hoel, J O Hagen, C Hammer, J P Hart Hansen, D Hedberg, J C Hesselbjerg, K Holmen, K Hutter, E Jansen, O Johannessen, J Jouzel, G Jugie, A Korhola, K Kristjansson, E Larsen, P Lemke, P Malkki, H Miller, J Oerlemans, V Pavlenko, S Raper, C Rapley, D Raynaud ; N Reeh, O Rogne, B Stauffer, J Taagholt, I Troen, C A Williams, M Zucchelli,
…
The interface between science and politics
B Stauffer said that science could not prevent global climate change, therefore science should support sustainability, however if science can point to means of reducing the rate of global change, this would show that there was something that could be done and would evoke political decisions.
J Jouzel said that the truth will come from the use of models and their validation and that there was a move in WCRP – CLIVAR to take more interest in palaeo-data. Communications between scientists and politicians are becoming more and more important and the scientific population must be large enough to be visible. D Raynaud commented that the work by Stocker in 1997 on the gross rate of emissions and the change in thermo circulation is important to conferences such as Kyoto. K Hutter added that politicians accused scientists of a high signal to noise ratio; scientists must make sure that they come up with stronger signals. The time-frame for science and politics is very different; politicians need instant information, but scientific results take a long time
A Ghazi pointed out that the funding is set once the politicians want the research to be done. We need to make them understand that we do not understand the climate system. Kyoto was a compromise and the EC accepted pollution levels which were not accepted by all members. At the next meeting in Buenos Aires in November 1998 we must learn how to approach the USA. The USA wants to buy the 30% of emissions that is not achieved in Russia. This emission trading is not acceptable. However the US argues that if the EC is trading within itself then it can do so also, however the EC will be achieving an emissions reduction of 6-8
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From Climategate Email 0700.txt
Politicians who control research funds pressuring scientists to provide “stronger signals” raises obvious concerns – though to be fair, in the email the scientists resolved to try to educate politicians on how science works.
One thing seems clear. Regardless of what you read, hear or see in the media, nobody truly understands the global climate system, especially when it comes to the behaviour of polar sea ice.
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