It’s real and happening fast, at least in relation to nature’s clock.
'Extreme' Changes Underway in Some of Antarctica’s Biggest Glaciers
As unusually warm ocean water melts the ice from below, the glaciers' grounding lines are receding fast, bolstering fears of worst-case sea level rise.
BY BOB BERWYN, INSIDECLIMATE NEWS
APR 2, 2018
A new analysis of satellite data has found "extreme" changes underway at eight of Antarctica's major glaciers,
as unusually warm ocean water slips in under their ice shelves.
The warmer water is eating away at the glaciers' icy grasp on the seafloor. As a result, the grounding line—where the ice last touches bedrock—
has been receding by as much as 600 feet per year, a new study shows. Behind the grounding line, the land-based ice then speeds up, increasing the rate of sea level rise.
The new continent-wide measurements of grounding lines suggests a widespread pattern of melting all around Antarctica,
said University of Leeds climate researcher Hannes Konrad, lead author of the analysis published today in the scientific journal Nature Geoscience.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-018-0082-z
Konrad and colleagues from University College London and the Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research in Germany measured how the grounding lines are shifting across 16,000 kilometers of coastline using data from the European Space Agency's CryoSat-2 satellites.
Their animation illustrates how the grounding line, tracked by satellite, is changing.
Receding at 5 Times Historical Average ...
In the world of Manmade Global Warming and its Cascading Consequences, there’s a new concept to learn about, “Marine Ice Cliff Instability”
My pal Mike loves pointing out that climate scientists have more to learn and that we should leave everything as is,
that is keep dreaming that "building the economy’ fast as predatory avarice allows is all important (if self-cannibalizing).
But, what Mike is too blinded and dishonest to recognize, is that all the extra scientific evidence and learning simply reinforces
that we already thoroughly understand the fundamentals,
and direction of trends and that these trends will be destructive to every aspect of human endeavors.
Where the surprises lie, is in the human tendency to oversimplify, and overlook the obvious, and to inject way too much optimistic spin.
One example of those surprises was how the gravitational influence of glacier mass, had strong impacts on rate of regional sea level rise,
when those glacier significantly melt.
Look up:
Now there’s a new one I hadn’t heard discussed before, “Marine Ice Cliff Instability”
and it reinforces the prospect of major Antartica melting much, much faster than glaciologists had ever dared suggest.
This new Antarctic Discovery will affect You massively
Climate State - Published on Apr 6, 2018 - 11:11 min
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QDPFa802xw
Past studies of Antarctica's accelerated glacier retreat focused on regional trends, a new study now finds continental trends of over ten percent of marine terminating glaciers moving inland. Current peak retreat has been documented to be in the ballpark of 25 meters each single year, with some even in the three digits.
Antarctica is an exception to the global reduction of the cryosphere. The continent hasn’t warmed for the past 200 years, and it is currently debated if Antarctic melting is contributing to sea level rise and by how much (Zwally et al., 2015). Antarctic lack of climatic response to Modern Global Warming and CO2 increase is not well understood, and it might have to do with the exceptional conditions of the continent that make it unique in many aspects.
The high sensitivity of the cryosphere to the CO2 increase might actually be an argument for a reduced sensitivity by the rest of the planet. The air above the cryosphere is the coldest of the planet, as it is not warmed much from below, and therefore it has the lowest humidity of the planet. The ratio of water vapor to CO2 in the air above the cryosphere is the lowest and the one that changes the most with the increase in CO2. There is the possibility that air dryness, and the low capacity to produce water vapor in response to warming might be the reasons why the cryosphere is particularly sensitive to CO2, but it implies the rest of the planet is less sensitive. If CO2 sensitivity is highest over the cryosphere (except Antarctica), and lower over the rest of the planet, this points to a negative feedback by H2O response, in its three states, to temperature changes. Antarctica doesn’t show increased sensitivity because it has not been warming through the entire Modern Global Warming, regardless of CO2.
Over the last 200 years CO2 levels have increased by 125 ppm, an increase comparable to that of a glacial termination in terms of CO2 forcing. Surprisingly, Antarctica shows absolutely no warming for the past 200 years (Schneider et al., 2006). The only place where we can measure both past temperatures and past CO2 levels with confidence shows no temperature response to the huge increase in CO2 over for the last two centuries. This evidence supports that CO2 has very little effect over Antarctic temperatures, if any, and it cannot be responsible for the observed correlation over the past 800,000 years. It also raises doubts over the proposed role of CO2 over glacial terminations and during Modern Global Warming.
No matter what kind of evidence you come up with, though climate deniers will admit climate is changing, they will insist that it has nothing to do with 7 billion people on earth, all burning something.
Climate change deniers don’t so much deny climate change altogether but deny that human activity is behind it, as long as they think they might have to cut back on capitalistic exploitation of the planet. It’s what they live for and they aren’t going to allow any bleeding heart liberals waving the climate change flag to stop them for one minute.
No matter what kind of evidence you come up with, though climate deniers will admit climate is changing, they will insist that it has nothing to do with 7 billion people on earth, all burning something.
Climate change deniers don’t so much deny climate change altogether but deny that human activity is behind it, as long as they think they might have to cut back on capitalistic exploitation of the planet. It’s what they live for and they aren’t going to allow any bleeding heart liberals waving the climate change flag to stop them for one minute.
Yes Lois anyone who can think for themselves is aware of that problem. Unfortunately for humanity the powers that be in our nation simply don't give a s**t. When I was a child my father told me only two kinds of people existed, fools or dammed fools, and yes he said he was included. And we all know which category the deniers are in.
How much food do we grow in Antarctica? Climate Change Is Messing With Your Dinner https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2018-climate-crops/
I bet we will have food production problems long before sea level rise reaches SIX FEET.
Oh wait, eventually global warming will make it possible to grow food in Antarctica. Now I understand. I was worried there for a minute. :lol:
How much food do we grow in Antarctica?
Climate Change Is Messing With Your Dinner
https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2018-climate-crops/
I bet we will have food production problems long before sea level rise reaches SIX FEET.
Oh wait, eventually global warming will make it possible to grow food in Antarctica. Now I understand. I was worried there for a minute. :lol:
Eventually... Yes.
But before that Siberia will melt, and most fields in USA will turn to desert.
Antarctica is an exception to the global reduction of the cryosphere. The continent hasn’t warmed for the past 200 years, and it is currently debated if Antarctic melting is contributing to sea level rise and by how much (Zwally et al., 2015). Antarctic lack of climatic response to Modern Global Warming and CO2 increase is not well understood, and it might have to do with the exceptional conditions of the continent that make it unique in many aspects.
Perhaps one reason Mike is so reluctant to include sources, is because that makes it so easy to point out how he's misrepresenting the story.
http://gregladen.com/blog/2015/11/03/nasa-study-of-antarctic-ice-melt-misunderstood/
"... There are two problems with this study that you need to know about. First, the study examines a data set that ends in 2008. The second problem is that there are indicators that the study is simply wrong, even though it likely has significant merits.
The last decade of research on Antarctica have shown, in many studies using a variety of techniques, that Antarctica is contributing to sea level rise. They have also shown that the rate of melting in Antarctic is probably increasing. Even more importantly, they have indicated that certain areas of Antarctic are current in a state of instability, suggesting that the rate of contribution of the southern continent’s ice mass to sea level rise may increase abruptly in the near future.
The fact that the study being reported uses older data could explain why it conflicts with everything else the science is telling us. Michael Mann, quoted in The Guardian, notes, “…the claims are based on seven-year-old data, and so cannot address the finding that Antarctic ice loss has accelerated in more recent years." To this I’ll add that it is somewhat annoying that those reporting the story, including, oddly, the authors of the study, are using forms of the word “current" to describe the result. These results are old, out dated, and while potentially valuable, a data set ending in 2008, when speaking of a rapidly changing system, is not current. ..."
It also leaves out the profound difference between fresh snow pack and millennia old glacial ice.
As for bringing the data "current" and for more information on how Zwally15 is being misrepresented by professional liars read these articles...
...In Zwally15 the authors discussed changes for the periods 1992 to 2001, based on ERS radar altimetry, and from 2003 to 2008 using ICESat data. ...
Antarctic ice - growing or shrinking? NASA vs Princeton and Leeds etc
https://blog.hotwhopper.com/2015/11/antarctic-ice-growing-or-shrinking-nasa.html
Fig.2. Ice mass changes (mass corrected using the GIA model by Ivins et al., 2013) in gigatons (Gt). The black lines are monthly GRACE observations with 2σ error bars determined from our analysis. The solid blue lines are the best-fit quadratic curves. Source: Harig and Simons 2015
The devil is in the details, see if you can spot it...
NEWS | November 5, 2015
Study: Mass gains of Antarctic ice sheet greater than losses
By Maria-José Viñas,
NASA's Earth Science News Team
https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2361/study-mass-gains-of-antarctic-ice-sheet-greater-than-losses/
Zwally’s team calculated that the mass gain from the thickening of East Antarctica remained steady from 1992 to 2008 at 200 billion tons per year,
while the ice losses from the coastal regions of West Antarctica and the Antarctic Peninsula increased by 65 billion tons per year.
NASA Scientist Warned Deniers Would Distort His Antarctic Ice Study -- That's Exactly What They Did
Research ››› November 4, 2015 11:51 AM EST ››› DENISE ROBBINS
A new NASA study found that there has been a net increase in land ice in Antarctica in recent years, despite a decline in some parts of the continent. The study's lead author astutely predicted that climate science deniers would distort the study, even though it does nothing to contradict the scientific consensus on climate change or the fact that sea levels will continue to rise. ...
Lead Author Jay Zwally: "I Know Some Of The Climate Deniers Will Jump On This," But "It Should Not Take Away From The Concern About Climate Warming." In an interview with Nature, the study's lead author, glaciologist Jay Zwally, warned that "climate deniers" would wrongly tout the study as proof that "we don't have to worry [about global warming] as some people have been making out": ...
Study Authors: Findings Mostly In Agreement With Other Studies, Do Not Discount Future Sea Level Rise. Zwally stated in the NASA press release that the study is "essentially in agreement with other studies" showing that land ice in West Antarctica is severely decreasing, but that the "main disagreement is for East Antarctica and the interior of West Antarctica." He also noted that over the next couple of decades, ice loss in West Antarctica will likely outweigh the snowfall increase in East Antarctica, and that sea level rise over past decades must be coming from somewhere else. The Christian Science Monitor reported: ...
The high sensitivity of the cryosphere to the CO2 increase might actually be an argument for a reduced sensitivity by the rest of the planet.
Here again Mike underscores that he still has no conception of what manmade global warming is about.
The Antarctic Cryosphere doesn't care about CO2 levels per say - what the Antarctic Cryosphere is reacting to is general global warming, including ocean warming.
Now all this warming is indeed related to CO2 and the way it increases our atmosphere's insulating ability.
But it really helps to understand the various components and their individual unique roll.
Rather than the confusing wanna-know-nothing mishmash of confusion that contrarians such as my pal here keep trying to shell out.
How much food do we grow in Antarctica?
Climate Change Is Messing With Your Dinner
https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2018-climate-crops/
I bet we will have food production problems long before sea level rise reaches SIX FEET.
Oh wait, eventually global warming will make it possible to grow food in Antarctica. Now I understand. I was worried there for a minute. :lol:
Eventually... Yes.
But before that Siberia will melt, and most fields in USA will turn to desert.
Eventually, indeed. http://icestories.exploratorium.edu/dispatches/big-ideas/tundra-and-permafrost/index.htmlThough Psik's gave me a hardy laugh. Even the condemned man likes a little laugh to lighten his walk to the gallows. ;-P
Over the last 200 years CO2 levels have increased by 125 ppm, an increase comparable to that of a glacial termination in terms of CO2 forcing. Surprisingly, Antarctica shows absolutely no warming for the past 200 years (Schneider et al., 2006). The only place where we can measure both past temperatures and past CO2 levels with confidence shows no temperature response to the huge increase in CO2 over for the last two centuries. This evidence supports that CO2 has very little effect over Antarctic temperatures, if any, and it cannot be responsible for the observed correlation over the past 800,000 years. It also raises doubts over the proposed role of CO2 over glacial terminations and during Modern Global Warming.
What the hell are you talking about?
Here is the study
Climate sensitivity estimated from ensemble simulations of glacial climate
Thomas Schneider von Deimling Æ Hermann Held Andrey Ganopolski Æ Stefan Rahmstorf
Received: 29 May 2005 / Accepted: 18 January 2006 Ó Springer-Verlag 2006
http://www.pik-potsdam.de/~stefan/Publications/Journals/Schneider_etal_ClimDyn_2006.pdf
From the Abstract
"... We show that irrespective of un- certainties in model parameters and feedback strengths, in our model a close link exists between the simulated warming due to a doubling of CO2, and the cooling obtained for the LGM. Our results agree with recent studies that annual mean data-constraints from present day climate prove to not rule out climate sensitivities above the widely assumed sensitivity range of 1.5–4.5°C (Houghton et al. 2001). Based on our inferred close relationship between past and future temperature evo- lution, our study suggests that paleo-climatic data can help to reduce uncertainty in future climate projections. Our inferred uncertainty range for climate sensitivity, constrained by paleo-data, is 1.2–4.3°C and thus almost identical to the IPCC estimate. ..."
Now, lets see if Mike can find some quotes that support his claim, perhaps he'll be good enough to share them.
Oh and what about recent studies? Considering that study is a dozen years old and it's a rapidly trending situation - I wonder if he has anything up to date.
Or if he's capable of facing his own errors and learning from his obvious mistakes.
Not asking him to listen to me, I'm pointing out the serious science.
I saw a “letter to the editor” yesterday in the newspaper, talking about “many science books” that say only 1% of climate change can be attributed to humans. I felt like writing back, “Don’t worry, guy. Your side won. For 30 years, scientists have been telling us that the climate was changing, but you guys denied it. You dragged your feet so long, it’s too late now to do anything about it. All I ask is that when the sea levels rise (not if, when) and all the millions of people who live on the coast move inland and start camping in your front yard because they need someplace to live, I don’t want to hear any whining about Why didn’t Scientists do something about this?”
I saw a "letter to the editor" yesterday in the newspaper, talking about "many science books" that say only 1% of climate change can be attributed to humans. "
1% compounded annually does what in 70 years?
So Hell breaks loose in another 40 years!
Scientists say billion-ton iceberg A68 has melted away |
DW News | Apr 18, 2021
Scientists say one of the world’s largest icebergs has melted away. The so-called A68 had a surface area of nearly 6,000 square kilometers and weighed approximately 1 billion tons after it broke away from Antarctica in 2017. Its drift toward the island of South Georgia in the southern Atlantic raised fears for wildlife there. But satellites show the formation is now virtually gone, broken into countless small fragments.
Abstract
Thwaites Glacier is the most rapidly changing outlet of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet and adds large uncertainty to 21st century sea-level rise predictions.
Here, we present the first direct observations of ocean temperature, salinity, and oxygen beneath Thwaites Ice Shelf front, collected by an autonomous underwater vehicle. On the basis of these data, pathways and modification of water flowing into the cavity are identified.
Deep water underneath the central ice shelf derives from a previously underestimated eastern branch of warm water entering the cavity from Pine Island Bay. Inflow of warm and outflow of melt-enriched waters are identified in two seafloor troughs to the north.
Spatial property gradients highlight a previously unknown convergence zone in one trough, where different water masses meet and mix.
Our observations show warm water impinging from all sides on pinning points critical to ice-shelf stability, a scenario that may lead to unpinning and retreat.
I know there’s nothing to do about it, but then, is ignoring it any better than wanting to think about it?
Our climate is changing faster than scientists predicted and the stakes are high.
Biodiversity loss.
Crop failure.
Social and ecological collapse.
Mass extinction.
We are running out of time, and our governments have failed to act.
Extinction Rebellion was formed to fix this.
We have a moral duty to take action — whatever our politics.
Tell the truth.
Governments must tell the truth by declaring a climate and ecological emergency, working with other institutions to communicate the urgency for change.
Act now.
Governments must act now to halt biodiversity loss and reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2025.
Go beyond politics.
Governments must create and be led by the decisions of a Citizens’ Assembly on climate and ecological justice.
I got that off of their website. Tough to argue with their introductory statement. The problem is when everyone is stabbing everyone else in the back, it makes any sort of progress difficult. I wish them luck. I’d probably support them, if they ever asked.
But, what chance do they have given today’s widespread and utter disregard for respecting honesty, physical facts, Earth’s biological reality, or utter dependence on a healthy biosphere, which we are destroying fast as possible, etc.
Hell most sheople in America’s lalaland seem to be stupidly rejecting the notion that we humans are social animals that need each other.
Like most human’s I need hope to survive, yet given all the facts and having spent well over a half century listening to people’s words and then watching their behavior, and being consistently disillusioned by the supposed adults in the room, leaves me at this weird loose end, just trying to make enough sense out of our self-destructive human nature, at least enough to retain a semblance of sanity as live out my days.
