From JoNova

By Jo Nova

Something big is going on around Antarctica, but climate experts have no idea what’s causing it

The ABC ran another Agony-Antarctica column in the news — talking about mysterious “rapid, interacting and sometimes self-perpetuating changes” in ominous but vague terms. Blob-Scientists hinted at ambiguous, unnamed, “changes” which might wipe out the cute emperor penguins, or at least non-specifically “heighten the risk” of their extinction, sometime, maybe.

“Scientists say there is emerging evidence of abrupt and potentially unstoppable changes in the Antarctic environment.

The changes are heightening the risk of significant sea level rise and the extinction of species, including emperor penguins.” — ABC “News”

Very unscientifically, none of the scientists pointed out that in 45 years of satellite data the entire south polar region below 60° has not even warmed. Isn’t that material?  One point six trillion tons of man-made CO2 hasn’t warmed the continent in the last 45 years. Doesn’t that matter?

Tell the world, Antarctica is the most stable climate on the surface of Earth:

Nothing says global warming like a trend of 0.03°C per decade.

For decades they told us that Antarctica would warm twice as fast as most of the world. What happened to that? Nothing.

To put it bluntly, it was warmer in Antarctica a thousand years ago, and two thousand years ago and the penguins survived just fine. In fact, The Penguin Optimum (they really call it that) was three or four thousand years ago when it was even warmer still. (Hall et al 2023).  It was the horrible cold of the Little Ice Age that wiped out thousands of penguins. Lord forbids, that animals that manage to survive in the coldest place on Earth would want it to be even colder.

But none of these awkward points help feed The Blob, so the ABC doesn’t ask, and the scientists don’t say anything. Instead, they talk about sea ice and currents, because it’s the only thing they have at the moment. 

Playing the “Sea Ice” and “Ocean Currents” Tarot Card

Like fortune tellers turning over a tarot card, it doesn’t matter what card they flip — you need to pay them money.

Matthew England (UNSW) and Nerilie Abram (Australian Antarctic Division) seem to be more than happy to take a scientific mystery and turn it into a political tax campaign. They craft a story of spooky changes going on with Antarctic Sea ice. The changes are real, but they don’t have the honesty to admit that they have no idea why the sea ice grew and then dropped off the way it has. Their models didn’t predict it, and it doesn’t seem to have anything to do with CO2. In 2013 Turner et al said the increase in Antarctic Sea was one of the great unsolved puzzles of climate science. Then after it vanished Silvano et al said the decline was “completely unexpected.” In other words, they have no clue. The “sea ice” card flipped!

See the graph below: for thirty years Antarctic Sea ice grew far and wide and set new records (the red line). Then in 2015, something changed and it dramatically shrank. CO2 has been rising the whole time, so it’s not the cause of the sharp shift in 2015.

Possibly, a big natural change in an ocean current caused the regime change, just like it has for millions of years.

Scientists are pretending to be fortune tellers in order to get our money

Copied below the “scientists” use their own ignorance to argue Australians should spend hundreds of millions to install solar panels and windmills in order to change ocean currents and save some penguins.

Iconic Antarctic species at risk amid ‘regime shift’, scientists say, with ‘rapid and self-perpetuating changes’

[ABC] “A regime shift has reduced Antarctic sea-ice extent far below its natural variability of past centuries, and in some respects is more abrupt, non-linear and potentially irreversible than Arctic sea-ice loss,” it says. Since 2014, the report says the median contraction of the Antarctic sea-ice edge has been around 120 kilometres.

‘Five-sigma’ event in Antarctica

Antarctic sea ice levels took a nose dive at a time of year when sea ice usually forms reliably — and that has experts worried.

The most significant decline was in the winter of 2023, which was so far below previous satellite records and historical modelling that scientists described it as “gobsmacking”.

Professor Abram said the report’s findings highlight the need to reduce carbon emissions. “The changes that we’re seeing in Antarctica and the Southern Ocean really reinforce the importance of these international agreements that we have for how we’re going to tackle climate change,” she said.

Buy carbon-credits or the penguin gets it?

As far as we can tell, penguins are pretty happy about getting rid of the sea ice. When people tracked Adelie penguins they found out that when more sea ice melts, the penguins ate more, swam further and have more baby penguins. Happy days.

The UAH satellite trend for Antarctica for the last 45 years was just 0.03°C warming per decade. Given that Emperor Penguins survive in anything from -60°C up to 20°C the penguins today would hardly care less about a pitiful extra tenth of one degree spread over nearly 50 years.

REFERENCES

Alison F. Banwell et al, Quantifying Antarctic‐Wide Ice‐Shelf Surface Melt Volume Using Microwave and Firn Model Data: 1980 to 2021, Geophysical Research Letters (2023). DOI: 10.1029/2023GL102744

Hall et al (2023) Widespread southern elephant seal occupation of the Victoria land coast implies a warmer-than-present Ross Sea in the mid-to-late Holocene, Quaternary Science Reviews, Volume 303, 1 March 2023, 107991

Mads Dømgaard et al, Early aerial expedition photos reveal 85 years of glacier growth and stability in East Antarctica, Nature Communications (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-48886-x

Alessandro Silvano, Aditya Narayanan, Rafael Catany, Estrella Olmedo, Veronica Gonzalez; Gambau, Antonio Turiel, Roberto Sabia, Matthew R. Mazloff, Theo Spira, F. Alexander Haumann, Alberto C. Naveira Garabato. (2025)  Rising surface salinity and declining sea ice: A new Southern Ocean state revealed by satellites. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2025; 122 (27) DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2500440122

Photo: Ice by AlKalenski and Penguins by Denis Luyten