Study Debunks Media’s Iceberg Alarmism: Antarctic Calving ‘Statistically Unexceptional’

In July 2017, CNN and a number of other media outlets posted stories about iceberg A-68 calving off of Antarctica’s Larsen C Ice Shelf, with CNN suggesting we should be “freaked out” about it because of climate change. CNN was wrong. [emphasis, links added]

It was based on an incomplete understanding of iceberg formation and calving, driven by a rush to judgment to further the false climate disaster narrative.

For example, CNN’s John D. Sutter wrote in this article: That huge iceberg should freak you out. Here’s why:

This doesn’t NOT look like climate change.

There is no disagreement among climate scientists about whether humans are warming the Earth by burning fossil fuels and polluting the atmosphere with greenhouse gases. We are. And we see the consequences.

The climate chicken littles of the media blamed it on climate change then, but today, it looks like an Emily Litella moment has just occurred, as a new peer-reviewed scientific study says it wasn’t anything abnormal, nor should we worry about it.

The new study published in Geophysical Research Letters tosses ice-cold water on those overhyped media claims.

In the study, MacKie et al. (2024) analyzed 47 years of observational satellite data from Antarctica and found that there has been no trend in annual Antarctic maximum calving size between 1976 and 2023.

The key findings of the study are:

• There has been no detectable upward trend in the annual maximum iceberg area in Antarctica since 1973, based on satellite measurements.
• The break-off of Iceberg A-68 from the Larsen C Ice Shelf was not statistically notable.
• Calving events several times larger than anything observed in the modern record could occur, and still, it would not necessarily be due to climate change.

To be clear, the calving of the A-68 iceberg was “statistically unexceptional” in the historical satellite record. Let that sink in. The authors write:

This finding suggests that extreme calving events such as the recent 2017 Larsen C iceberg, A-68, are statistically unexceptional and that extreme calving events are not necessarily a consequence of climate change.

The authors also underscore that the calving of ice sheets and glaciers is indicative of a healthy cycle of glacier advance and retreat, rather than signaling that a glacier or ice sheet is unstable, stating,

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.

What’s more, based on results the results of the generalized extreme value (GEV) distribution model used in the study, the scientists concluded that it is statistically possible for there to be calving events several times larger than anything observed so far in the satellite dataset.

For example, the authors say, “A once-in-a-century calving event would yield an iceberg surface area approximately the size of Switzerland.”

This is backed by other historical paleoclimate data and studies such as Bentley et al., 2005, which suggest that such extreme calving events have happened previously throughout the Holocene, which the authors make note of in their discussion.

In other words, the media made a big ado about nothing.

Will this new study by Mackie et al. disproving the climate alarm noise in 2017 get a lot of press? Probably not. It doesn’t fit the sensationalistic narrative of pending climate doom promoted by the media.

They’d just as soon sweep this inconvenient truth under the rug than admit they weren’t just wrong, but wildly so.

Note: A hat tip to Chris Martz on Twitter for alerting me to this new study.

Read more at Climate Realism