The ice caps hold a special place in the cold hearts of the global warming advocates who are all too quick to insist that our ice caps are currently melting at an unprecedented rate. We suspect that they will not be particularly thrilled to learn that a paper has just appeared in Geophysical Research Letters entitled “A doubling in snow accumulation in the western Antarctic Peninsula since 1850.” The article is by scientists with the British Antarctic Survey and the Desert Research Institute in Reno, Nevada; the work was funded by the UK Natural Environment Research Council and the U.S. National Science Foundation. In case you think that the Desert Research Institute in Nevada would have little interest in Antarctica, recall from geography classes you’ve had that Antarctica receives little precipitation and is regarded by climatologists as a frozen desert.

We have covered Antarctica many times in past essays, and despite literally thousands of websites claiming that some calamity is occurring in Antarctica related to global warming, we side with the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in this matter. Magazine covers have wonderful pictures of melting of the Antarctic, but IPCC in their 2007 report clearly states “Antarctic sea ice extent continues to show inter-annual variability and localized changes but no statistically significant average trends, consistent with the lack of warming reflected in atmospheric temperatures averaged across the region” (in fact, Antarctic sea ice extent has recently set record highs for both total areal extent as well as total extent anomaly (see here and here)). Furthermore, IPCC tells the world (and we wonder if anyone is listening) “Current global model studies project that the Antarctic ice sheet will remain too cold for widespread surface melting and is expected to gain in mass due to increased snowfall.”

Elizabeth Thomas and her two colleagues begin their article noting “Antarctic precipitation is a difficult parameter to measure directly, primarily because of problems with blowing snow. A recent synthesis of available data suggests no significant change in snowfall across the continent as a whole since the 1950s. However, proxy indicators do suggest an increase in the Peninsula.” They note “that the number of days with precipitation — based on synoptic observations of ‘present weather’ — at Faraday station, in the north-western Peninsula, increased at a rate of 12.4 days/decade between 1950–99. In addition, model data reveal an upward trend in regional precipitation for the period 1980–2004 while satellite altimeter data indicate an increase in elevation in the western Peninsula for 1992–2003, thought to be due to greater snowfall.” Notice that they are talking about more snow and more snow accumulation – in Antarctica. Read rest ...