Author: Stephen Johnson / Source: Big Think
- A 2015 NASA study caused major controversy by claiming that Antarctica was gaining more ice than it was losing.
- The study said that ice gains in East Antarctica were effectively canceling out ice losses in the western region of the continent.
- Since 2015, multiple studies have shown that Antarctica is losing more ice than it’s gaining, though the 2015 study remains a favorite of climate change doubters to this day.
Climate change skeptics don’t usually cite NASA when trying to make a point. The space agency has, after all, been a leading voice in advancing climate change research and awareness, promoting the idea that at least 97 percent of climate scientists agree that recent global warming is due to human activity, and overseeing a host of missions designed to study the changing nature of the climate from space.
There is one exception, however. In 2015, a team of scientists led by Jay Zwally, a glaciologist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, published a study in the Journal of Glaciology under the title ‘Mass gains of the Antarctic ice sheet exceed losses’.
It was immediately and warmly embraced by climate change skeptics and deniers, and some in conservative media.
“Ooops! New NASA study: Antarctica isn’t losing ice mass after all!” read one headline. “MELTDOWN MYTH: Antarctic ice growing is just the first EVIDENCE global warming is NOT REAL” read another.
The study was, to them, a much-welcomed monkey wrench thrown from NASA’s hands into the gears of a liberal-controlled narrative machine that wouldn’t stop shouting about climate change and, specifically, the melting Arctic and Antarctic ice. It gave them license to roll their eyes at the so-called consensus they’d long doubted.
They weren’t entirely wrong. The 2015 study was a direct challenge to a consensus held by climate scientists—just not the one the skeptics hoped to shatter.
What did the study say?
In short, the study claimed that, yes, Antarctica is losing some ice, but it’s simultaneously gaining more ice than it’s losing, and scientists haven’t realized this because they’ve been incorrectly measuring snow and ice across the massive continent.
Zwally and his team argued that Antarctica saw a major increase of snowfall starting about 10,000 years ago in East Antarctica and the interior of West Antarctica. As the snow fell, it compacted and thickened the continent’s ice with each passing year. This thickening process continues to this day, the team said, and it’s caused Antarctica to gain more ice than it lost to melting glaciers from 2003 to 2008.
Scientists generally agree that East Antarctica is gaining mass in the form of ice or snow. The question is how much, and in what form? It’s on these points that Zwally’s team strayed from the…
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