Antarctic ice

[Old Rocks]

Growth Of Antarctic Sea Ice A Warning Bell For Coastal Flooding

The stunning outward spread of ice floes atop the seas surrounding the South Pole has been caused by cold freshwater flowing out of melting Antarctic glaciers. (Shifting winds may also be playing a role in the breaking of previous Austral sea ice records.) That melting is forming layers of unusually cold and relatively salt-free surface waters in the region, the tops of which are being frosted with layers of blue-white ice.

Those layers of cold water could recast the southern stretches of the influentialAtlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, which ferries water between tropical and polar regions, all the way from the Arctic to the Antarctic — with planet-churning consequences. Recent modeling indicates that these cold-water layers also formed as Antarctica melted during the prehistoric past, when they blocked warm water, which gets carried by deepwater currents to the Southern Ocean from the tropics, from surfacing.

At the surface, that warm water normally sloughs its excess heat into the atmosphere, cools down, then flows back north — typically a standard feature of the Atlantic’s circulation system. Without that Antarctic upwelling, the new study, which waspublished in Nature Communications, warns that the ice sheet is in danger of beingmelted from beneath at a hastening pace.

“We found out that if you put a certain amount of freshwater into the Southern Ocean around Antarctica, then basically it reduces this overturning — it reduces the upwelling of that warm water,” said the study’s lead author, Nick Golledge, a scientist at the Victoria University of Wellington’s Antarctic Research Center in New Zealand. “All that heat just gets trapped at a depth where it can melt the base of the ice shelves and the grounded ice that’s sitting in the ocean.”

The paradox of the expanding Antarctic Sea Ice is rather well explained. And it doesn't bode well for the future.

 

[Billy_Bob]

Cant have facts in that piece can you ... I see they hit every alarmist bull shit piece.

1. Thermal variation is not going to cause faster melting BECAUSE ITS NEGATIVE... Albedo changes are going to make massive cooling in the southern hemisphere this year.

2. The slowing of ocean heat movement already apparent by the cold flow up western south America has increased. It is also the reason that any warmth left to drive an ENSO event has died.

Sea level rise due to ice melt......my god all I can do is laugh at the total ignorance in that statement. let me know when your drink over flows (after the ice in it melts).

 

[CrusaderFrank]

AGWCult will believe ANYTHING that's fed into the hive mind, no matter how stupid, ridiculous or insane.

 

[Saigon]

Sea level rise due to ice melt......my god all I can do is laugh at the total ignorance in that statement. let me know when your drink over flows (after the ice in it melts).

Ummmm....and what happens if ice enters the water from land, genius?

Does the sea level rise then?

 

[CrusaderFrank]

Less ice = manmade global climate disruption warming change

More ice = manmade global climate disruption warming change

"This new learning amazes me, Brother Maynard!"

 

[Old Rocks]

Cant have facts in that piece can you ... I see they hit every alarmist bull shit piece.

1. Thermal variation is not going to cause faster melting BECAUSE ITS NEGATIVE... Albedo changes are going to make massive cooling in the southern hemisphere this year.

2. The slowing of ocean heat movement already apparent by the cold flow up western south America has increased. It is also the reason that any warmth left to drive an ENSO event has died.

Sea level rise due to ice melt......my god all I can do is laugh at the total ignorance in that statement. let me know when your drink over flows (after the ice in it melts).

Well, Billy_Boob, since we are talking of ice that is on land melting, yes, that does cause sea level rise.

 

[SSDD]

Well, Billy_Boob, since we are talking of ice that is on land melting, yes, that does cause sea level rise.

Tell me rocks...where are the surface temperatures in Antarctica warm enough to cause this melting? The only melting going on down there is due to volcanic activity....you want to blame that on CO2 as well?

 

[mamooth]

Wow, deniers are desperate. "Volcanic activity"? They're scraping the bottom of their barrel o' lies.

These are _magic_ volcanoes, you see. They don't know where those volcanoes are, but they're sure they're melting all the ice. Like all denier science, deniers think it will become true if they simply wish for it hard enough.

Clap harder, deniers! Tinkerbell and the magic volcanoes will die unless you _believe_!

 

[IanC]

What an ass you are mamooth. You think 'magical' CO2 warming is melting ice at minus 30 degrees but you disagree that geothermal energy at the grounding point is trivial. The only part of Antarctica that is warming just happens to have a string of active volcanoes underneath it but you think that is inconsequential. And you call us deniers.

 

[jc456]

Wow, deniers are desperate. "Volcanic activity"? They're scraping the bottom of their barrel o' lies.

These are _magic_ volcanoes, you see. They don't know where those volcanoes are, but they're sure they're melting all the ice. Like all denier science, deniers think it will become true if they simply wish for it hard enough.

Clap harder, deniers! Tinkerbell and the magic volcanoes will die unless you _believe_!

so that's how you all do your CO2 parties eh? LOL.. Your eyes are brown right?

 

[RollingThunder]

Tell me rocks...where are the surface temperatures in Antarctica warm enough to cause this melting? The only melting going on down there is due to volcanic activity....you want to blame that on CO2 as well?

What an ass you are mamooth. You think 'magical' CO2 warming is melting ice at minus 30 degrees but you disagree that geothermal energy at the grounding point is trivial. The only part of Antarctica that is warming just happens to have a string of active volcanoes underneath it but you think that is inconsequential. And you call us deniers.

More nonsense from the bamboozled denier cult morons.

No, Volcanoes Are Not the Primary Cause For the Melting Ice Caps
ViceNews
By Kayla Ruble
June 11, 2014
Climate change skeptics are using a new study about geothermal heating under the world’s ice caps to claim that volcanoes are the real cause of glacial melting, not global warming.

The study was conducted by researchers at the Institute for Geophysics at the University of Texas at Austin (UTIG) and published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. It analyzes geothermal heat below the glaciers in West Antarctica and acknowledges that these sources — which include magma movement and volcanic activity —do contribute to some ice cap melting.

Yet, according to the researchers behind the study and other experts in the field, these findings do not actually provide new insight into why the ice is melting.

“It is true that there are active volcanoes in West Antarctica, and so there may have been some local changes, but in most cases, at most times, volcanoes are not erupting under the ice,” Richard Alley, a geologist at Penn State, told VICE News. “This paper is exciting for modelers and geologists who focus on Antarctica, but it doesn’t tell you anything about why the ice is now thinning.”

Instead, UTIG's research provides more detailed mapping areas of the geothermal heat sources under the Thwaites Glacier, which is one of the most vulnerable parts of the rapidly deteriorating West Antarctic Ice Sheet. Using radar detection, the researchers also pinpointed heating levels at a value of two to three times higher than previously thought and which has been used in previous studies.

With this new data, scientists will be able to plug in more accurate heating values into their calculations while studying the collapse of glaciers in the region.

Dusty Schroeder, the lead author on the UTIG study, told VICE News that this information gives important insight into how hot the earth is underneath the glaciers and thus how it contributes to certain changes.

“Especially in terms of trying to predict the rate of rising sea levels, this is a factor you need to take into account,” Schroeder said.

While this form of geothermal heating does contribute to glacial melting, it does not necessarily mean "climate alarmism has suffered yet another devastating setback."

“People have to be careful when drawing hasty conclusions into how much volcanoes can affect glacial melting,” Eric Rignot, an earth science professor at University of California Irvine and a principal scientist at NASA, told VICE News.

Rignot, also the lead author of a study out last month that documented widespread retreatof the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, said geothermal heating contributes to a few millimeters of melting annually, compared to rising sea temperatures which can trigger rates of up to 100 meters each year.

“The studies can be confusing individually, you have to put it in a larger perspective by looking at all the studies together,” Rignot said.

According to Schroeder, Rignot’s paper, and another that came out in May, show that warm oceans are currently the main cause of glacier loss at the edge of the ice.

“The fastest glacial changes are happening where the ocean is warmer,” Schroeder said. “Geothermal heating is not enough by itself to have caused the observed changes.”

In response to those who are using his study to deny climate change, Schroeder confirmed that volcanic activity is not the dominant force of ice loss and rising sea levels.

“If you want to understand how the glaciers are changing, you can’t just look at the ice, you can’t just look at the climate system, you can’t just look at the geology, you have to look at the whole picture,” he said.

 

[jc456]

"The fastest glacial changes are happening where the ocean is warmer,” Schroeder said. “Geothermal heating is not enough by itself to have caused the observed changes.”
So maybe someone could help me here, if the water is frozen and the ice extent is being added by melting surface ice, than how the hell does warm water have anything to do with land glacier melt? How does that warm water make its way on land?

this is where I lose it with you warmer k00ks.

 

[IanC]

"The fastest glacial changes are happening where the ocean is warmer,” Schroeder said. “Geothermal heating is not enough by itself to have caused the observed changes.”
So maybe someone could help me here, if the water is frozen and the ice extent is being added by melting surface ice, than how the hell does warm water have anything to do with land glacier melt? How does that warm water make its way on land?

this is where I lose it with you warmer k00ks.

Some of the WAIS glaciers are grounded below sea level.

 

[Crick]

The warm water underneath has separated the grounded portions of the Antarctic ice sheet from the sea bottom. That separation is headed ashore where a majority of the area of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) has a base below sea level (due to the weight of the ice. When that all breaks loose from land and floats away, it will raise sea level by well over 100 metes. That is not currently expected to happen for over 100 years, but every new study on the behavior of the water and ice in the area is working to bring that point closer and closer in time to the present.

 

[jc456]

"The fastest glacial changes are happening where the ocean is warmer,” Schroeder said. “Geothermal heating is not enough by itself to have caused the observed changes.”
So maybe someone could help me here, if the water is frozen and the ice extent is being added by melting surface ice, than how the hell does warm water have anything to do with land glacier melt? How does that warm water make its way on land?

this is where I lose it with you warmer k00ks.

Some of the WAIS glaciers are grounded below sea level.

I know the Ice Sheet is grounded on the sea floor. But I believe the statement was surface ice was melting. Surface in my world is above water on land.

I believe it was old scrocks that said it.

 

[jc456]

Cant have facts in that piece can you ... I see they hit every alarmist bull shit piece.

1. Thermal variation is not going to cause faster melting BECAUSE ITS NEGATIVE... Albedo changes are going to make massive cooling in the southern hemisphere this year.

2. The slowing of ocean heat movement already apparent by the cold flow up western south America has increased. It is also the reason that any warmth left to drive an ENSO event has died.

Sea level rise due to ice melt......my god all I can do is laugh at the total ignorance in that statement. let me know when your drink over flows (after the ice in it melts).

Well, Billy_Boob, since we are talking of ice that is on land melting, yes, that does cause sea level rise.

old scrocks #6. Land melt.

 

[CrusaderFrank]

What an ass you are mamooth. You think 'magical' CO2 warming is melting ice at minus 30 degrees but you disagree that geothermal energy at the grounding point is trivial. The only part of Antarctica that is warming just happens to have a string of active volcanoes underneath it but you think that is inconsequential. And you call us deniers.

Mamooth is a classic Cult member, not a single functioning brain cell and faithfully repeats anything he/she is told.

CO2 can melt ice in -30F, uh huh, just like it's melting Mt Everest. Uh huh

 

[Crick]

What is the minimum temperature you're going to find in the LIQUID sea water washing up against the WAIS, Whizzo?

 

[RollingThunder]

Sea level rise due to ice melt......my god all I can do is laugh at the total ignorance in that statement. let me know when your drink over flows (after the ice in it melts).

Well, Billy_Boob, since we are talking of ice that is on land melting, yes, that does cause sea level rise.

old scrocks #6. Land melt.

I see you're terminally confused again, JustCrazy. As usual.

The continent of Antarctica is losing ice mass and that water is flowing into the ocean and raising sea levels. That is one point. Old BoobyBobNutJob expressed his retarded disbelief that melting ice could raise sea levels, comparing it to ice cubes in a glass of water. "Sea level rise due to ice melt......my god all I can do is laugh at the total ignorance in that statement. let me know when your drink over flows (after the ice in it melts)." OldRocks pointed out that melting ice that is on land does indeed add to sea level rise.

Then later there is the article I posted about how the melting of massive amounts of Antarctic ice is not the result of some possible sporadic volcanic activity under the West Antarctic ice shelves. That is the second point. These ice shelves are grounded below sea level so part of these glaciers are below sea level and exposed to the ocean waters. One of the scientists involved with the study if the volcanoes said this:
"According to Schroeder, Rignot’s paper, and another that came out in May, show that warm oceans are currently the main cause of glacier loss at the edge of the ice.

“The fastest glacial changes are happening where the ocean is warmer,” Schroeder said. “Geothermal heating is not enough by itself to have caused the observed changes.”

In response to those who are using his study to deny climate change, Schroeder confirmed that volcanic activity is not the dominant force of ice loss and rising sea levels."

He is obviously talking about the melting of the ice at the edge of the glacier where it is partly underwater.

You are so stupid, you can't even keep track of where your quotes are coming from. OldRocks was not referring to the exact same Antarctic ice melt as Dr. Schroeder is talking about, you poor confused fool.

 

[IanC]

What is the minimum temperature you're going to find in the LIQUID sea water washing up against the WAIS, Whizzo?

Minus 2C as defined by physics. The Southern Ocean is not showing any warming so what is your point? Ocean water has been lapping up against the WAIS for as long as it has been there, at least hundreds of thousands of years. But your computer MODEL says everything is going to melt. Am I right? You are so gullible. And you'll believe the next thing you read even if it contradicts what you believed yesterday. As long as its not from a 'denier' of course.