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Scientists find Antarctic ice is melting faster
Ice melt shows through at a cliff face at Landsend on the coast of Cape Denison in Antarctica December 14, 2009.
Credit: Reuters/Pauline Askin
CANBERRA |
CANBERRA (Reuters) - The summer ice melt in parts of Antarctica is at its highest level in 1,000 years, Australian and British researchers reported on Monday, adding new evidence of the impact of global warming on sensitive Antarctic glaciers and ice shelves.
Researchers from the Australian National University and the British Antarctic Survey found data taken from an ice core also shows the summer ice melt has been 10 times more intense over the past 50 years compared with 600 years ago.
"It's definitely evidence that the climate and the environment is changing in this part of Antarctica," lead researcher Nerilie Abram said.
Abram and her team drilled a 364-metre (400-yard) deep ice core on James Ross Island, near the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula, to measure historical temperatures and compare them with summer ice melt levels in the area.
They found that, while the temperatures have gradually increased by 1.6 degrees Celsius (2.9 degrees Fahrenheit) over 600 years, the rate of ice melting has been most intense over the past 50 years.
That shows the ice melt can increase dramatically in climate terms once temperatures hit a tipping point.
"Once your climate is at that level where it is starting to go above zero degrees, the amount of melt that will happen is very sensitive to any further increase in temperature you may have," Abram said.
Robert Mulvaney, from the British Antarctic Survey, said the stronger ice melts are likely responsible for faster glacier ice loss and some of the dramatic collapses from the Antarctic ice shelf over the past 50 years.
Their research was published in the Nature Geoscience journal.
(Reporting by James Grubel; Editing by Paul Tait)
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Simple magma buoyancy calculations of ICE loss in Greenland indicate the land mass will be pushed upwards 500+ meter. This amount of movement has volcanic potential to cause a very rapid acceleration of melt, a self reinforcing conflagration. We should devote space assets to watch for this.
Greenland ice volume would push sea levels upward 7.2 meters (23.6ft). This would likely stop the driver of the global ocean currents. Global climate would change rapidly and radical, a up ending civilizations on a global scale. We know what America looked like 100M years ago with no polar ice; two mountain ranges, Appalachian and Laramidia separated by the Western Interior Seaway. Florida completely awash. Russia and China would dominate the world.
“…temperatures have gradually increased by 1.6 degrees Celsius (2.9 degrees Fahrenheit) over 600 years, the rate of ice melting has been most intense over the past 50 years…”
This begs a few questions: (1) What were temperatures doing between 1000 and 600 years ago? (2) How much of that 1.6 degrees Celsius increase occurred between 600 and 50 years ago, before becoming “most intense”? (3) Since previous reports have stated overall Antarctica ice coverage was increasing, and only “parts” are referenced here, has the trend in overall Antarctica ice coverage changed?
The article seems carefully worded to spin the results of the “findings”.
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