We’ve had some fun over the years with politicians and the media pointing to large icebergs as proof of the global boiling planetary breakdown, especially when the ice in question breaks loose from Antarctica. But just as one swallow does not make a summer, neither does one iceberg make a climate trend, even a big berg. In fact, according to a new study of 47 years of satellite records, the two apparently have nothing to do with each other. Specifically, the risk of large iceberg calving hasn’t changed in half a century.
The authors of the new study, led by Emma Mackie of the University of Florida, used satellite estimates of the size of every iceberg that had detached itself from Antarctica from 1976 to 2023. They then focused on the largest iceberg every year and asked whether these were getting larger. The answer? See for yourself:
Right. No trend. In some years, like 2000, a very large section of ice breaks loose. But in others the maximum is much smaller. Seeking to separate signal from noise, the authors ran a statistical analysis called a “nonstationary GEV” and concluded:
“Our non-stationary GEV models show no discernible upward trend in the expected annual maximum iceberg size over time. Instead, this trend is weakly negative, and even significant for Antarctica overall. This finding suggests that recent extreme calving events such as the break-off of A68 in 2017 are not necessarily a symptom of climate change. In fact, A68 is statistically unexceptional when compared to the total observational record, with calving extremes peaking between 1986 and 2000. As such, our results reveal that extreme calving events should not automatically be interpreted as a sign of ice shelf instability, but are instead representative of the natural cycle of calving front advance and retreat.”
Natural cycle? Oh Joe. Say it ain’t so. But it is. And even if we observe a large detachment of ice from Antarctica in the future, they note:
“The occurrence of such a massive calving event would not necessarily be a consequence of climate change; instead, they are possible even under stationary assumptions. Notably, paleoclimate studies suggest that significant ice shelf collapse, on a scale greater than the maximum observed sizes in our data set, has already occurred during the Holocene... extremely large calving events are likely typical of a healthy ice sheet system wherein exists a quasi-stable cycle of calving front advance and retreat.”
Oh darn. Complexity and natural cycles. Wretched, isn’t it?
So the next time a large iceberg story detaches from the frozen continent of climate journalist clichés, just remember that the actual story is that something happened that happens practically every year and has been happening practically every year for tens of thousands of years and this year’s event was normal and unexceptional.
Of course if they told you so the game would be up. And the bad ship Alarmism would go down.
Glaciers move, in part, due to the weight of snow accumulation at their source. Higher accumulations at the source will push the toe of the glacier to move faster and further. The point: more icebergs calving does not necessarily mean the glacier is diminishing, and can actually mean the glacier is growing. However a thicker glacier isn’t clickbait.
Icebergs calving area plotted per year. One would expect it to show a trend with global warming using “journalism- think”. But then again, how much calving would there have been during, say, the peak of the last ice age. A lot. Probably just a statistics-gathering waste of time, like expecting fly specs on a calendar to have a trend-line by date.
SO, an average of 1 iceberg per year is ALARMING! LOL Looks like this has happened for decades!