Antarctic Melt Could Raise Sea by 53M

[hortysir]

For those who care about Global Warming -

Ice melt in Antarctica could raise sea by 53m - Independent.ie

STEVE CONNOR – PUBLISHED 06 MAY 2014 02:30 AM

Parts of the vast ice sheet of East Antarctica – which holds enough water to raise global sea levels by 53m – could begin an irreversible slide into the sea this century, causing an unstoppable process of global coastal destruction, scientists have warned.
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Truth be told, they don't know one way or the other

From your linked article, that was written by a reporter/editor NOT a scientist,

In March, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said sea-level rise was one of the most difficult areas to predict, due to the unknown effects in the Antarctic.

 

[depotoo]

http://m.theaustralian.com.au/news/...t-record-levels/story-e6frg8y6-1226913708208#

Antarctic sea ice at record levels

GRAHAM LLOYDTHE AUSTRALIAN
MAY 12, 2014*12:00AMANT
ARCTIC sea ice has expanded to record levels for April, increasing by more than 110,000sq km a day last month to nine million square kilometres.The National Snow and Ice Data Centre said the rapid expansion had continued into May and the seasonal cover was now bigger than the record &#8220;by a significant margin&#8217;&#8217;.

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

For those who care about Global Warming -

Ice melt in Antarctica could raise sea by 53m - Independent.ie

STEVE CONNOR – PUBLISHED 06 MAY 2014 02:30 AM

Parts of the vast ice sheet of East Antarctica – which holds enough water to raise global sea levels by 53m – could begin an irreversible slide into the sea this century, causing an unstoppable process of global coastal destruction, scientists have warned.
<more>

could begin an irreversible slide into the sea this century

When? So we can point and laugh when it fails to happen.

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

You're content to rely on 3% who deny global warming?

Climate Change: Consensus

Ninety-seven percent of climate scientists agree that climate-warming trends over the past century are very likely due to human activities,1and most of the leading scientific organizations worldwide have issued public statements endorsing this position. The following is a partial list of these organizations, along with links to their published statements and a selection of related resources.

97%? Wow! Sounds serious.

So that would be how many out of how many?

 

[IanC]

Time to do what deniers hate most now, which is cite hard data. This from Jan 2014.

Revisiting GRACE Antarctic ice mass trends and accelerations considering autocorrelation
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giving an ice mass trend of &#8722;58 ± 16 Gt/yr and an acceleration of &#8722;15 ± 13 Gt/yr2 ."
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Also, the bowl shape doesn't matter if even the lip of the bowl is below sea level. Slowly increasing sea temperatures are chewing away at the ice shelves from below. Once the ocean reaches the land-based ice which has a base below sea level, it starts undermining that and floating it away. It's not happening tomorrow or in a few years, but on the scale of a century.

The constant below-freezing temps are also not an issue. Antarctica loses ice not by melting, but by having it flow into the ocean.

the abstract from a 2006 paper-

ABSTRACT

Using measurements of time-variable gravity from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment satellites, we determined mass variations of the Antarctic ice sheet during 2002–2005. We found that the mass of the ice sheet decreased significantly, at a rate of 152 ± 80 cubic kilometers of ice per year, which is equivalent to 0.4 ± 0.2 millimeters of global sea-level rise per year. Most of this mass loss came from the West Antarctic Ice Sheet.

like I said; the estimates for Antarctica ice loss have dramatically come down in the last decade. Zwally, who used altimetry rather than GRACE, found a 40 Gt increase for Antarctica. that paper didnt get much traction in the media for some reason.

 

[IanC]

For those who care about Global Warming -

Ice melt in Antarctica could raise sea by 53m - Independent.ie

STEVE CONNOR &#8211; PUBLISHED 06 MAY 2014 02:30 AM

Parts of the vast ice sheet of East Antarctica &#8211; which holds enough water to raise global sea levels by 53m &#8211; could begin an irreversible slide into the sea this century, causing an unstoppable process of global coastal destruction, scientists have warned.
<more>

could begin an irreversible slide into the sea this century

When? So we can point and laugh when it fails to happen.

 

[ScienceRocks]

Maybe in 2 thousand years

 

[flacaltenn]

Brand new paper in Glaciology Society 2014...

http://www.igsoc.org/journal/60/220/t13J117.pdf

Thwaites Glacier grounding-line retreat: influence of width and
buttressing parameterizations
David DOCQUIER,1 David POLLARD,2 Frank PATTYN1
1Laboratoire de Glaciologie, Universite´ Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium

ABSTRACT. Major ice loss has recently been observed along coastal outlet glaciers of the West Antarctic ice sheet, mainly due to increased melting below the ice shelves. However, the behavior of this marine ice sheet is poorly understood, leading to significant shortcomings in ice-sheet models attempting to predict future sea-level rise.

................... Here we use an ice-stream/ice-shelf model and perform a number of
experiments along a central flowline to analyze the sensitivity of its grounding line on centennial timescales. In the absence of width and buttressing effects, we find that the grounding line retreats by 300 km in 200 years from the present day (rate of 1.5 km a&#8211;1). With variable glacier width implemented in the model, flow convergence slows the retreat of Thwaites grounding line at 0.3&#8211; 1.2 km a&#8211;1. The parameterization of ice-shelf buttressing according to different observed scenariosfurther reduces the glacier retreat and can even lead to a slight advance in the most buttressed case.

IS THIS the science we're panicking over???? Where did the "irreversible" and "positively" come from?

Why that came from the politically inspired PRESS releases that had nothing to do with the admissions in the science that "not much is known".. Goofy days we live in..