When Climate PR Contradicts Climate Science

In a recent summary of NOAA’s State of the Climate in 2023 report, it details how greenhouse gas measurements were the highest on record, and the Antarctic ice sheet has been in constant decline.

The accompanying graphic shows continuously declining ice sheet levels in Antarctica of approximately 100 gigatons per year since 2003.

But the actual State of the Climate in 2023 report—not the summary—doesn’t show anything like that about the Antarctic ice sheet. In fact the report includes a graphic showing recent increasing levels of ice surface mass balance for Antarctica.

The report does detail how sea ice levels—floating chunks of snow covered ice, different from the main ice sheet—are at record lows, but only since 2015 when it was at a record high level. While that could be climate related, it also mentions that Antartica was not melting for years despite inaccurate climate predictions saying it should have been declining:

After nearly four decades of gradual increase in net SIE [sea ice extent], unreconciled with climate models that predict general Antarctic sea-ice decline with an increasingly warmer global climate

That detail—that Antarctic ice sheet levels were not declining but stable or even increasing for decades prior to 2016—jibes with other reports from the IPCC and the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC).

It’s not the first time that the more public version of climate science completely contradicts the underlying research that it was based on. NASA’s website appears to contradict NASA’s own data on solar irradiance.

And the one source of data that shows a decline in Antarctic ice from NASA may be misrepresenting the actual underlying research as well.

GRACE Satellite Data

So where is the State of the Climate graphic getting this decline Antarctic ice sheet levels?

While it is not cited in the graphic, the data likely comes from NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment Follow-On (GRACE-FO) satellite. That data appears to be the only source that shows a steadily declining measurement of ice levels pre-2015.

But that NASA GRACE data contradicts NASA’s own Global Ice Viewer using data from the NSIDC, which shows the trend of Antarctica having historically high levels of sea ice up until around 2016.

Since the late 1970s, the Antarctic has gained an average of 7,300 square miles (18,900 sq km) of sea ice per year, peaking in 2014.

A source regularly cited by NASA in their joint research on Antarctic ice levels is the paper Mass Balance of the Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheets from 1992 to 2020. That too shows no multi-decadal decline in the Antarctic ice sheet.

The ice sheet gains roughly 2000 km³ of ice from precipitation each year and loses a similar amount through solid ice discharge into the surrounding oceans.

Our dataset indicates that between 1992 and the later parts of the 2000s, the Antarctic Ice Sheet was in near balance, with modest EAIS gains equaling WAIS losses.

Does GRACE Data Actually Show A Decline

Every source, including those from NASA, appears to show no decline in Antarctic ice for decades except GRACE. But does GRACE data even show declining Antarctic ice levels? Maybe not.

While the more public versions of GRACE data show an obviously stark decline in Antarctic ice, manual analysis of GRACE data through their interactive tools show no such decline.

Measurements of water-equivalent thickness—an estimate of the thickness of the Antarctic ice sheet—show decades of little change or sometimes increases.