When Good Measurements become Bad Science
Analysis of ice cores, drilled at Law Dome just inland from Australia’s Casey Station in the Antarctic shows increased snowfall in the Antarctic over the past 30 years.
http://news.curtin.edu.au/news/wa-drought-linked-to-greater-snowfall-in-the-antarctic/
Dr Tas van Ommen, Principal Research Scientist with the Australian Antarctic Division in Hobart will be presenting his research results from the analysis of ice cores during a seminar ‘Antarctic Ice Cores and Australian Climate’ at Curtin University on Monday 25 October.
But inevitably global warming is then invoked on the basis of speculation and correlations.
Analysis of ice cores drilled at Law Dome, a site just inland from the Antarctic Casey station, has revealed that snowfall variability may be linked to climate in the Australian sector of the Southern Ocean and southwest Western Australia.
Dr van Ommen said the ice cores provide a record of annual variations in snowfall and provide a record that stretches back over 750 years.
“Over the past 30 years, the cores indicate that there has been a significant increase in snowfall in that area,” he said.
“This inversely correlates to the occurrence of a significantly lower rainfall and subsequent drought that has been experienced in the southwest of Western Australia. “So when there’s extra moisture at Law Dome, the same circulation pattern is starving Western Australia of moisture.”
Further work is underway to explore these connections and understand the reasons behind them. However, these events of greater snowfall in the Antarctic and drought in WA also coincide with human induced changes in the atmosphere that may be contributing to global warming.
“The snowfall increase we see in the last 30 years lies well outside the natural range recorded over the past 750 years,” Dr van Ommen said.
The item only becomes newsworthy because of this “coincidence” and the speculation that this increased snowfall may be linked to the drought with reduced precipitation in Western Australia which may be linked to “global warming” !!
Coincidences and inverse correlations do not a science make!
But the tag “global warming” brings in the funding.
Tags: Antarctic, climate, increased snow fall
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