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Antarctic Ice Discussion


pottyprof

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Posted
  • Location: Mytholmroyd, West Yorks.......
  • Weather Preferences: Hot & Sunny, Cold & Snowy
  • Location: Mytholmroyd, West Yorks.......

The increase in thinning and the retreat of the grounding line has nothing to do with the mantle plume underlying that region of Antarctica. If it did why are we seeing this rapid surge in flow now and never before?

There have been a number of papers recently looking at the data of the ocean below and how we are losing our antarctic cold bottom water in front of all the major glacial outlets there.

We see this in Greenland also where a circulation cell sets up infront of the grounding line feeding warm waters to that region and melting it back inland.

Sadly for the likes of Thwaites this is a one way trip with it close to falling off the ledge it sits on and back into the deep ( below sea level) channel beyond.

There is good reason for thwaites' nickname " The Doomsday Glacier" as that retreat is what will unleash the iceberg flotillas Hansen warns of.

If we recall antarctica has two parts ,east and west, separated by an ocean channel ( currently ice filled). Inundation from P.I.G./Thwaites will enable rapid clearing our of this ice and the loss of the Wedel side of the channel. We last saw this 125,000 yrs ago when global CO2 /temps were slightly lower than they are today so history tell us this area will go with massive implications for the planet.

The observations of the major ocean terminating glaciers of Greenland has taught us about 'ice cliff failure' and the basic physics that says an unsupported column of ice will collapse, under gravity, over a certain height. The 'floating off' of the ice beyond the sill Thwaites sits on will provide the same conditions for year round collapse of the ice there leading to a 'meltwater pulse' that would render all the planets ports defunct over a decadal time scale but also lead to climate disruption greater than we are already beginning to see.

The resumption of the pacific driver setup leading to rapid losses there means it is this decade that will see significant acceleration of all the glaciers around the continent but more so for those already at near terminal collapse ( thwaites/P.I.G.)

The 25 million ,recently committed to the study of Thwaites by an international team of scientists shows us how serious this one glacier is to our scientists.

Folk worry about the slowdown of the AMOC by us in the UK, imagine the impacts on global circulation if we end Antarctic deep water formation by the unleashing of a constant stream of bergs as the channel between East and West Antarctica clears out.

These are no longer predictions of what might come to pass but the observations of a process already at play.

I had declared, nearly two years ago now, that the battle to try and stave off the worst of AGW is lost and the Deniers have been successful in committing us to a worse than B.A.U. trajectory.

We are now seeing an early low solar so let us see if we see and exaggerated version of what we witnessed last low solar now the 'Naturals' are augmenting AGW.

When you look at the period of the last low solar a repeat would mean the loss of Arctic sea ice ( record years of 07'/2010/2012) impacted grain production across both the U.S. and Russia , record outbreaks of wildfires both in and out of season, full surface melt across Greenland ( and record ice loss), Amazonian droughts ( three '1 in a hundred year' events over last low solar) record global rainfall events ( two in a year here in Hebden Bridge ( 2012) and droughts.

All of this will of course be augmented by the enhanced circulation issues low sea ice in the northern hemisphere is causing over autumn/early winter in the N.Hemisphere.

Unlike last time the global dimming driven by China is now rapidly falling and we have seen the resumption of the Atlantic Hurricane seasons we last saw in 05' so I would again expect the rapid formation of 'canes in our basin ( bombing) and the extension of their lives as majors ( as we saw last year). No need to wait and speculate about the impacts of Global climate shift, it is here.

Edited by Gray-Wolf
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Posted
  • Location: Sheffield
  • Location: Sheffield

well until the research team gets down there and has a good look , we will have to disagree on that point Mr Wolf , time will tell , it won't make any difference to the outcome , but west Antarctica is very active geologically , I would find it difficult to believe that melting there did not have a geological component

Antarctica-91-newly-discovered-volcanoes.thumb.jpg.f555948bf68942521b3f9dea87013ba9.jpgvolcano_steam.thumb.jpg.35a829b5831c654be3d7ca925cfb9c0d.jpgvents.thumb.png.bc0e2e20718d834abbda286d76f3af8d.png

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Posted
  • Location: Ireland, probably South Tipperary
  • Weather Preferences: Cold, Snow, Windstorms and Thunderstorms
  • Location: Ireland, probably South Tipperary
On 01/05/2018 at 00:07, tablet said:

the Thwaites glacier in west Antarctica is melting , as it has been doing for some time , due to geothermal activity , which means there is nothing at all we can do about it

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0012821X14005780

antarctic-volcano1.gif

The geothermal activity is likely to have been active for thousands, if not millions of years. Blaming it for recent mass loss in glaciers is like blaming geothermal activity along the mid Atlantic ridge for recent ocean warming.

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Posted
  • Location: North York Moors
  • Location: North York Moors

Well it isn't melting [more] there because of air temperatures getting above freezing.
Geothermal heat isn't constant for millions of years. Is that surprising?

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Posted
  • Location: Ireland, probably South Tipperary
  • Weather Preferences: Cold, Snow, Windstorms and Thunderstorms
  • Location: Ireland, probably South Tipperary
15 hours ago, 4wd said:

Well it isn't melting [more] there because of air temperatures getting above freezing.
Geothermal heat isn't constant for millions of years. Is that surprising?

It's in the western Antarctic so it does occasionally experience temps above 0C. But as it's a marine terminating glacier, ocean temperatures will play a bit roll in the melting, speed of basal sliding, thinning and thus the mass balance of the glaciers catchment area, which is important for the general stability of the western Antarctic ice sheet. The geothermal activity may explain why the glacier has traditionally been very fast flowing in general though (but not the acceleration in flow rate).

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Posted
  • Location: Beccles, Suffolk.
  • Weather Preferences: Thunder, snow, heat, sunshine...
  • Location: Beccles, Suffolk.
6 minutes ago, tablet said:

the hypothesis of warm water transference through oceanic currents may be true , but there are some that don't agree with it , or at least think it is less of a contributing factor

https://phys.org/news/2017-06-thwaites-glacier-ice-loss-quickly.html 

 

Aye; is could be heat from geothermal activity, heat from warming ocean currents or heat from a warming world...Or it could be a combination of all three. Not that that makes a great deal of difference; if millions of tonnes of land-ice melts into the ocean, global see-level will rise...?

Looking for solutions might be a tad more important than bisecting rabbits over the exact cause?

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Posted
  • Location: Ireland, probably South Tipperary
  • Weather Preferences: Cold, Snow, Windstorms and Thunderstorms
  • Location: Ireland, probably South Tipperary
32 minutes ago, tablet said:

the hypothesis of warm water transference through oceanic currents may be true , but there are some that don't agree with it , or at least think it is less of a contributing factor

https://phys.org/news/2017-06-thwaites-glacier-ice-loss-quickly.html 

 

That study doesn't disagree. It just suggests that previous projections of ocean induced melting may be slightly overestimated, but not my much.

"The new study, published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, finds that numerical models used in previous studies have overestimated how rapidly ocean water is able to melt the glacier from below, leading them to overestimate the glacier's total ice loss over the next 50 years by about 7 percent."
 

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Posted
  • Location: Sheffield
  • Location: Sheffield

Foehn winds are a weather phenomena that happen in many parts of the world , and I would suggest have been occurring in Antarctica for a long time , and just because it has only recently been recorded doesn't mean it is a new turn of events , if we are to believe that Antarctica is in grave danger from warming , from sea or air we must look at the continent as a whole , the same way as looking just at the Bering sea as  a sign of arctic sea ice is a bad idea as it is open to the influence of the Pacific Ocean , the question would be " is Antarctica warming " , and many here point fingers at the West of the continent , but  the east of Antarctica is stable , if the world ,as a whole is warming , why is eastern Antarctica not warming , why has it unchanged ?

https://www.the-cryosphere.net/12/521/2018/tc-12-521-2018.pdf

 

jgyybfyrbdt64.JPG

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Posted
  • Location: Beccles, Suffolk.
  • Weather Preferences: Thunder, snow, heat, sunshine...
  • Location: Beccles, Suffolk.
7 minutes ago, tablet said:

Foehn winds are a weather phenomena that happen in many parts of the world , and I would suggest have been occurring in Antarctica for a long time , and just because it has only recently been recorded doesn't mean it is a new turn of events , if we are to believe that Antarctica is in grave danger from warming , from sea or air we must look at the continent as a whole , the same way as looking just at the Bering sea as  a sign of arctic sea ice is a bad idea as it is open to the influence of the Pacific Ocean , the question would be " is Antarctica warming " , and many here point fingers at the West of the continent , but  the east of Antarctica is stable , if the world ,as a whole is warming , why is eastern Antarctica not warming , why has it unchanged ?

https://www.the-cryosphere.net/12/521/2018/tc-12-521-2018.pdf

 

jgyybfyrbdt64.JPG

I agree Tablet, we do need to look at Antarctica as whole, but we also need to look at the Earth as a whole; when we do that, we realise that Antarctica is merely a 'small cog in a very big wheel' - rather like putting a single ice-cube on one's kitchen floor and expecting it to keep the entire house cool in perpetuity?

For how much longer can CCDs keep their heads in the sand, and deny the inevitable?

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Posted
  • Location: Sheffield
  • Location: Sheffield

I would suggest that Antarctica is a very large cog , and one of the first places you would expect to witness warming on a planetary scale , given that it is the coldest place on this particular planet , I see the quote from the excellent Professor Hawking at the bottom of your post Mr Stone , a wise man indeed , my favourite quote , and the reason ( probably ) why I question all the science I see , "Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts" – Richard Feynman

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Posted
  • Location: Mytholmroyd, West Yorks.......
  • Weather Preferences: Hot & Sunny, Cold & Snowy
  • Location: Mytholmroyd, West Yorks.......

Seeing as the Peninsula was the first place to see alarming warming ( prior to losing the Larsen shelfs) I'm lost to your reference?

The Peninsula is still one of the fastest warming places on the planet but the unprecedented warming of the lands surrounding the Arctic Ocean ( and the changes this is driving) is now overtaking Antarctica.

The international efforts to study the doomsday Glacier ( Ward Hunt) illustrates just how quickly we are registering the threat from Antarctica.

The past 5 years has seen us better understand the processes involved in rapid ice loss and some of that has come from direct observations esp. around the Ocean Terminating Glaciers  of Greenland ( and their switch to year round calving).Fears are that Ward Hunt/P.I.G. are now ready to also display this behaviour and have already passed the point of no return.

Any collapse would be on decadal timescales and sea level hikes over that period would be measured in feet not mm's! 

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Posted
  • Location: Beccles, Suffolk.
  • Weather Preferences: Thunder, snow, heat, sunshine...
  • Location: Beccles, Suffolk.
19 hours ago, tablet said:

I would suggest that Antarctica is a very large cog , and one of the first places you would expect to witness warming on a planetary scale , given that it is the coldest place on this particular planet , I see the quote from the excellent Professor Hawking at the bottom of your post Mr Stone , a wise man indeed , my favourite quote , and the reason ( probably ) why I question all the science I see , "Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts" – Richard Feynman

We should all question things, Tablet...But, ever since 2LOT was discovered/formulated it has never been successfully challenged (notwithstanding a few peculiar quantum effects); heat will always travel from a warmer thing to a colder thing, and the size of the cog can only really affect the time-line, not the eventuality: the eventual warming of the Antarctic is inevitable. All other things remaining equal, of course?

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Posted
  • Location: Sheffield
  • Location: Sheffield

As Mr Wolf is having trouble with my reference , let attempt to clarify , but before I do , let me state that I made no reference to the Arctic or Greenland , and I certainly didn't question the laws of thermo or hydrodynamics , the point I was trying to make was that the statement " the Antarctic is melting " is not true , some of the Antarctic is melting , but not all , east Antarctic is stable ( as I demonstrated in the study I posted ) it is , in fact making modest gains , to the detriment of the  Adélie penguin which nest there , from a colony of 18, 000 individuals only 2 chicks survived due to the distance the adults had to travel to find ice free waters to hunt in , this was blamed on global warming , but the penguins nest in east Antarctica so that's clearly false , and the Thwaites Glacier itself is unusual , all glaciers have a bed ( like a river bed ) which flows downhill to the sea , but the Thwaites bed goes the opposite way , the ice is travelling uphill to reach the sea , so calculating the amount of ice that would reach the sea from the 112 km long and 32 km wide glacier is impossible , and , I would suggest , is why a study is underway , so simply stating that Antarctica is melting is quite wrong

 

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Posted
  • Location: Mytholmroyd, West Yorks.......
  • Weather Preferences: Hot & Sunny, Cold & Snowy
  • Location: Mytholmroyd, West Yorks.......

I think you forgot one of the biggest Ocean rtermination glaciers in east Antarctica there Tablet? Totten is in the same perilous position as Thwaites/Pig.

As for the channel between east and west antarctica it emerges on the Roosevelt island end of Ross and so any opening up of the channel will necessitate the loss of a section of ross ( size of France)?

The ice from Thwaites will no longer need to 'flow uphill' once the ocean floods the channel below and floats the ice off? Of course this would lead to the formation of ice cliffs far higher than gravity can support and so we see the rapid de icing of the channel and Hansen's 'flotilla of ice bergs' in the waters in front ( plus a multiple feet hike in sea level as land supported ice becomes floating ice so displacing waters).

The same configuration was found to exist at Totten when the Russian team studied there two years ago?

As for the opposite end of the channel that Thwaites/PIG service? well that is Weddell .......

Most of the collapse of coastal Antarctica is dependent on warm water at depth and gravity.

It is not dependent of 2m temps.

The warm water were busy working their way into the coastal regions throughout the noughties passing under the ozone depletion invigoration circumpolar current and reaching Ross by 2012.

The flip in the Pacific Naturals, coupled with the healing of the Ozone hole, has thrown the region back into the behaviours we saw from 50's to 80's and so more perfect conditions to be seeing a reduced sea ice burden and accelerated ice shelf thinning/calving.

As an aside, we had seen the rapid industrialisation of China/asian coincide with pacific forcing that detract from the AGW forcing. As such the rampant warming we saw through the end of last century was replaced with a more mellow decade and a half. This has now abruptly ended and we see China/asia cleaning out their particulate/sulphate pollutants whilst the naturals swing back to augmenting AGW warming ( since 2014) is leading to rapid changes in prone areas?

My personal concerns are around the solar cycles impact on Arctic sea ice numbers?

Last low solar we saw our record sea ice losses ( extent/area/volume) and if that repeats this time we effectively lose sea ice in the north and the amelioration of our climate it used to bring. 

.

 

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Posted
  • Location: Sheffield
  • Location: Sheffield

Totten Glacier

po.8.thumb.JPG.a21062e41d99df990c3822354b3bb0bd.JPGrtc5c43.thumb.JPG.1b2c63a8561365275b66e7a4ce5f9e9e.JPG416443377_hbtbyt.thumb.JPG.2dcd792ce5de4a3422fb26d24ea5c75c.JPG

I didn't mention the Totten Glacier , because it seems to have slowed , and has been unchanged for a few years now

Edited by tablet
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Posted
  • Location: Mytholmroyd, West Yorks.......
  • Weather Preferences: Hot & Sunny, Cold & Snowy
  • Location: Mytholmroyd, West Yorks.......

https://news.sky.com/story/sea-level-warning-as-scientists-find-larger-part-of-massive-totten-glacier-floating-11298094

Seems to be still rapidly changing?

The worry has to be the impacts of the rapidly healing Ozone hole is allowing a slackening of the circumpolar winds , and hence the circumpolar current.

Since the 80's Antarctica had been effectively placed in 'splendid isolation' from the ravages of AGW forcings.

2014 saw the Pacific naturals switch positive augmenting AGW forcing and soon after we saw sea ice levels there collapse back to early 80's levels. This hints at Antarctica now playing 'catch up' with the rest of the planet including the ingress of warmed ocean waters.

It will quickly become apparent if this is the case as we will see a series of large calving events from the major ice shelfs that had been protected by the increased circumpolar winds or the augmented circumpolar current ?

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Posted
  • Location: York
  • Weather Preferences: Long warm summer evenings. Cold frosty sunny winter days.
  • Location: York
40 minutes ago, Gray-Wolf said:

https://news.sky.com/story/sea-level-warning-as-scientists-find-larger-part-of-massive-totten-glacier-floating-11298094

Seems to be still rapidly changing?

The worry has to be the impacts of the rapidly healing Ozone hole is allowing a slackening of the circumpolar winds , and hence the circumpolar current.

Since the 80's Antarctica had been effectively placed in 'splendid isolation' from the ravages of AGW forcings.

2014 saw the Pacific naturals switch positive augmenting AGW forcing and soon after we saw sea ice levels there collapse back to early 80's levels. This hints at Antarctica now playing 'catch up' with the rest of the planet including the ingress of warmed ocean waters.

It will quickly become apparent if this is the case as we will see a series of large calving events from the major ice shelfs that had been protected by the increased circumpolar winds or the augmented circumpolar current ?

So lack of ozone depletion is now a bad thing!!!

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Posted
  • Location: Mytholmroyd, West Yorks.......
  • Weather Preferences: Hot & Sunny, Cold & Snowy
  • Location: Mytholmroyd, West Yorks.......

Folk never looked beyond skin cancer when looking at the impacts of Ozone loss on the strat, and below,!

When you had the Deniers telling you that Antarctica 'balanced out' Arctic sea ice losses they were relying on the impacts of the ozone hole on the atmosphere below and then ,via the katabatic winds, out into the Antarctic sea ice permanently pushing it out from shore ( opening up polynya's to produce even more ice to flow out.... the fabled 'ice factory'). The million sq km ice losses ,when a southern storm was able to hit the ice, showed us how fragile the peripheral ice  was but for those with an agenda the fact that it was there was enough.

I spent the noughties warning folk that both the naturals would switch back to ice loss configuration ( augmented by AGW warming) and the Ozone hole would mend and we would lose its help in staving off ice loss across Antarctica.

We are now at that time and so we have ice levels last seen in the late 70's ( and headed down) and renewed warm water impacts on the base of all major ice shelfs.

Were it all just natural variation we would expect to fall back to previous lows but we also have 35 years of AGW to hit Antarctica with.

Expect rapid change at best or the start of the loss of the doomsday Glacier at worst.

EDIT: Sadly this thread starts in 2010 so we miss my warnings from the late noughties .

We do see ( page 2) reports from the B.A.S. team on the way the Ozone hole was propping up the ice levels. Now? not so much!

Edited by Gray-Wolf
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