The Washington Post recently ran a shocking above-the-fold article warning us of “Escalating Ice Loss Found in Antarctica.” A new paper by Eric Rignot of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory shows a net loss of ice where most scientists thought the opposite would occur.

The Post went full-bore with this one, spreading the article on to an entire interior page. The piece ends by noting that Rajenda Pachauri, head of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), is so concerned that he’s is personally going down to inspect the situation.

He should. Before he even gets to Antarctica, Pachauri is going to see something even more surprising than Rignot’s finding. Despite a warming Southern Ocean, the amount of ice surrounding Antarctica is now at the highest level ever measured for this time of the year, since satellites first began to monitor it almost thirty years ago. This represents a continuation of the record set last winter (our summer).

Thanks to the miracles of modern technology, we can also look at the departure from the average for ice mass in a given month. At present, the coverage of ice surrounding Antarctica is almost exactly two million square miles above where it is historically supposed to be at this time of year. It’s farther above normal than it has ever been for any month in climatologic records. Around now, because it’s summer down there and the ice is headed towards its annual low point, there should be about seven million square miles of it. That means, as data in University of Illinois’ web publication Cryosphere Today shows, that there is nearly 30% more ice down in Antarctica than usual for this time of the year.

(Dr. Benny Peiser)