Surprise! Ice is rebounding at BOTH poles climate is more complex than we know

When it comes to climate change, to invoke one of Al Gore’s favorite sayings, the biggest challenge is not what we don’t know, but what we know for sure but just isn’t so.Two new studies show that the Earth’s climate is far more complex than often acknowledged, reminding us of the importance of pragmatic energy and climate policies.One of them, led by researchers at China’s Tongji University, finds that after years of ice sheet decline, Antarctica has seen a “surprising shift”: a record-breaking accumulation of ice.The paper takes advantage of very precise measurements of Antarctic ice mass from a series of NASA satellites called GRACE (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment).Since the first GRACE satellite was launched in 2002, Antarctica has seen a steady decline in the total mass of its glaciers.Yet the new study found the decline reversed from 2021 to 2023.Melting Antarctic ice contributes to global sea-level rise, so a reversal of melting will slow that down.

Understanding the dynamics of ice mass on Antarctica is thus essential.The recent Antarctica shift makes only a small dent in the overall ice loss from 2022, but comes as a surprise nonetheless.A second new paper, a preprint now going through peer review, finds a similar change at the opposite end of the planet.“The loss of Arctic sea ice cover has undergone a pronounced slowdown over the past two decades, across all months of the year,” the paper’s US and UK authors write.They suggest that the “pause” in Arctic sea ice decline could persist for several more decades.Together, the two studies remind us that the global climate system remains unpredictable, defying simplistic expectations that change moves only in one direction.In 2009, then-Sen.John Kerry warned that the Arctic Ocean would be ice-free by 2013: “Scientists tell us we have a 10-year window — if even that — before catastrophic climate change becomes inevitable and irreversible,” he said.Today, six years after ...