[LINK] Scientists offered cash to dispute climate study

[Eric Scheid]

On 5/2/07 7:24 PM, "Karl Auer" <kauer at biplane.com.au> wrote:

> Eric wrote;
>>> (Last I read, which was a while ago admittedly, Antarctica is classified a
>>> desert because it has very close to zero precipitation. Sure, lots of snow
>>> gets blown around, but not much added)
> 
> It's not a desert because there is no precipitation; it's a desert
> because there is very little liquid water.

got a citation for that definition?

http://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/deserts/what/

"There are almost as many definitions of deserts and classification systems
as there are deserts in the world. Most classifications rely on some
combination of the number of days of rainfall, the total amount of annual
rainfall, temperature, humidity, or other factors. In 1953, Peveril Meigs
divided desert regions on Earth into three categories according to the
amount of precipitation they received. In this now widely accepted system,
extremely arid lands have at least 12 consecutive months without rainfall,
arid lands have less than 250 millimeters of annual rainfall, and semiarid
lands have a mean annual precipitation of between 250 and 500 millimeters.
Arid and extremely arid land are deserts, and semiarid grasslands generally
are referred to as steppes."


http://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/deserts/types/

"Polar deserts are areas with annual precipitation less than 250 millimeters
and a mean temperature during the warmest month of less than 10° C. Polar
deserts on the Earth cover nearly 5 million square kilometers and are mostly
bedrock or gravel plains. Sand dunes are not prominent features in these
deserts, but snow dunes occur commonly in areas where precipitation is
locally more abundant. Temperature changes in polar deserts frequently cross
the freezing point of water. This "freeze-thaw" alternation forms patterned
textures on the ground, as much as 5 meters in diameter."


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_of_Antarctica

"Precipitation over Antarctica varies widely, from high values over the
Peninsula (meters per year) to very low desert-like values (tens of mm per
year) in the high interior. Note that the precipitation is given in
water-equivalent, rather than depth of snow. Almost all Antarctic
precipitation is snowfall. The total, averaged over the continent, is about
166 mm per year (Vaughan et al., J Climate, 1999)."

(do I lose points for quoting wikipedia?)

e.