NASA Article - Is It Accurate?

The previous post focused on the state of Antarctica's ice and if it was melting or not. One article by NASA argued that the ice cover was growing.
Jay Zwally, a glaciologist with NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland has calculated that the thickening of East Antarctica was 200 billion tons every year between 1992 and 2008. However, West Antarctica and the Antarctic Peninsula's loss of ice increased by 65 billion tons per year. Zwally believes that Antarctica is not contributing to sea level rise, rather, it is causing a fall in sea levels by around 0.23mm per year. The IPCC on the other hand has determined that Antarctica's melting is causing a rise in sea levels by 0.27mm per year. This debate will continue until more evidence is found.
Figure 1: An image (source) showing the fragmentation of ice surrounding Antarctica.
It is tempting to believe such a prestigious government agency but caution must be taken as other international organisations such as the IPCC say the complete opposite - that the Antarctic ice is melting at a record speed.
Figure 2: Map showing the rates of mass changes in Antarctica 2003-2008. By NASA (source).
This image above shows how the mass of the continent is changing. It is clear to see in west Antarctica that there is a loss in mass by over 4.0 Gt/yr. In contrast, parts of east and central Antarctica have increased in mass, in some places by 1.60 Gt/yr. This image of the mass changes gives a clear view into what parts of the continent are melting or growing and is a success for NASA. However, the IPCC and other organisation's results are more convincing than the NASA article as more independent research has been carried out. This has then been compiled into publishable and applicable data. It is difficult to measure how snow and ice change year on year so an ICESat mission was launched to show any changes. To help accurately measure ice changes in Antarctica, NASA is developing the successor to the ICESat mission, ICESat-2, which is scheduled to launch in 2018. At present, there is no clear result whether the NASA article is accurate and the status of the Antarctic ice will stay as a mystery until more evidence is found using ICESat-2.


The next post will concentrate on the impact the changing Antarctic cryosphere has had on humans and what effect humans will have on the cryosphere at present and in the future.