Speaking of out of sight out of mine - consider Antarctica's melting glaciers

Science and Technology
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While the Republica/libertarian crowd are all a gaga about increased seasonal ice around Antarctic (which can easily be explained by the dynamics of global warming with a twist of the Ozone Hole tossed in to make it interesting - Sea ice in Antarctica has reached record levels! Wait, what?! Does this fly in the face of Climate Change theory? No. Sea Ice scientist Dr Guy Williams... | By University of Tasmania | Facebook) They ignore what’s happening to glaciers that go back thousands, actually tens of thousands of years

Melting moments: a look under East Antarctica's biggest glacier Posted on 2 June 2015 by Guest Author Tas van Ommen at SkepticalScience.com and at The Conversation (…) (…) Before embarking on the ICECAP project, there were huge gaps in our maps of the bedrock under the ice. The region contains some of the thickest, deepest ice on the continent, more than 4 km thick, and it’s a place we need to map as we look for a good site to drill an elusive “million-year" ice core. Generally, we expected the mapping surveys to reveal a picture of a stable ice sheet, not likely to be affected by changes wreaked by climate warming like the more vulnerable West Antarctica. But this view was to change. The melting monster Satellite monitoring drew our attention to a hot-spot right beside our Casey hub. The Totten Glacier is the largest glacier in East Antarctica. It drains most of the area of our survey, every year discharging more than 70 cubic km of water into the Southern Ocean. The monster glacier reaches the coast behind a large rocky obstacle known as Law Dome. Casey Station sits on the west side of Law Dome, while the Totten Glacier runs out on the east. As it does so, it carves a deep trench more than 2 km below sea level, through which the ice emerges and begins to float. Our satellite measurements were showing that just around this point where the ice begins floating, the Totten is thinning and its surface height is lowering by about 2 m per year. ICECAP researchers set about measuring the Totten Glacier’s outlet, so we could understand what is happening. The project’s results have quite dramatically shifted our view of East Antarctica, in terms of both the overall picture of ice stability in the region, and the implications of the changes in the Totten Glacier itself. The previous view was that, aside from a poorly mapped valley far inland of Casey called the Aurora Basin, most of the ice was resting on hills and mountains, well above sea level. But it turns out that Aurora Basin is very deep and much larger than we thought. More seriously, the basin is connected to the coast by terrain that is extensively below sea level. This makes it much more like West Antarctica, where there is serious concern that gradual but irreversible ice loss is already under way. The prospect that such a pattern could also impact East Antarctica is a new one – and the prospect that the Totten Glacier’s thinning could herald a similar process of accelerating ice loss in East Antarctica is deeply concerning. Glaciers and groundwork To appreciate the physical situation, some glaciology is needed. … (continue at http://www.skepticalscience.com/news.php?n=2998)
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And that’s Eastern Antarctica, the stable half.
Now on to happenings on the scary Western Antarctic.

NEWS | MAY 12, 2014 West Antarctic Glacier Loss Appears Unstoppable http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2014-148 A new study by researchers at NASA and the University of California, Irvine, finds a rapidly melting section of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet appears to be in an irreversible state of decline, with nothing to stop the glaciers in this area from melting into the sea. The study presents multiple lines of evidence, incorporating 40 years of observations that indicate the glaciers in the Amundsen Sea sector of West Antarctica "have passed the point of no return," according to glaciologist and lead author Eric Rignot, of UC Irvine and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. The new study has been accepted for publication in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. These glaciers already contribute significantly to sea level rise, releasing almost as much ice into the ocean annually as the entire Greenland Ice Sheet. They contain enough ice to raise global sea level by 4 feet (1.2 meters) and are melting faster than most scientists had expected. Rignot said these findings will require an upward revision to current predictions of sea level rise.
Images from http://earthsky.org/earth/loss-of-six-glaciers-in-west-antarctica-appears-inevitable
Glaciologist and lead study author Eric Rignot of UC Irvine and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California spoke about his team’s findings: The collapse of this sector of West Antarctica appears to be unstoppable. The fact that the retreat is happening simultaneously over a large sector suggests it was triggered by a common cause, such as an increase in the amount of ocean heat beneath the floating sections of the glaciers. At this point, the end of this sector appears to be inevitable.
Animation - Loss of West Antarctic Glaciers Appears Unstoppable https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Adh86ma3oxw
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It’s almost 2022, so guess it’s time to see what humanity has managed to accomplish so far as global warming is concerned. What happens in the Antarctic, may be isolated, but it doesn’t stay in the Antarctic.

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Just Have a Think](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRBwLPbXGsI2cJe9W1zfSjQ)

Antarctica is home to some of the world’s largest ice sheets and glaciers. They existed in a stable equilibrium of ebb and flow for millions of years until global warming started to melt them faster than the snow falls could replenish their ice. Now a new US / UK research collaboration has discovered that the rate of melt is even worse than scientists feared. What’s driving this latest acceleration, and can we slow it down?

And before anyone decides to make a big deal out of the recent Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station extreme cold temperates, one needs stop and think about the dynamics involved. The Antarctic land mass, the surrounding ocean and currents, the circumpolar vortex winds, the ozone hole, topped off with the katabatic winds.

Then it can make sense within a warming global system.

The unusually cold temperatures were recorded at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station (1957-present), where temperatures for the months of June, July, and August (winter) were recorded at -62.9 degrees Celsius (-81.2 degrees Fahrenheit), according to the National Snow and Ice Data Centre (NSIDC) (here).
This is 3.4 degrees Celsius (6.1 degrees Fahrenheit) lower than the 1981-to-2010 average. This is the second coldest winter on record at the station (here). …
From April to September, the average temperature recorded at the station was -60.9 degrees Celsius (-77.6 degrees Fahrenheit) - a record for those six months, known as the polar darkness period …

The cold temperatures recorded in 2021 have been attributed to a “strong circumpolar vortex” Rick Aster, professor of geophysics and department head geosciences department at Colorado State University, told Reuters (here).

A circumpolar vortex, also known as the polar vortex, is a band of intense winds that bring a pool of extremely cold temperatures to the South and North Pole (here), (here).

The circumpolar vortex kept the region “unusually isolated from the rest of the atmosphere, and thus unusually cold”, Aster said (here).

I wondered why that article didn’t say anything about the ozone hole. Look what I found.

By Tereza Pultarova published September 16, 2021

" A giant ozone hole has opened up over Antarctica this year. Already larger than the entire ice-covered continent, the ozone hole has surpassed the size of 75% of ozone holes measured since 1979 and is still growing."

Oh Ozone hole. Know what that means? Less atmospheric insulation to slow down the escape of heat into space. Geophysics and our global heat and moisture distribution engine at work.
That’s another excellent contributing factor for the extreme cold spell!
And for increasing the polar vortex winds, which isolated the region from the rest of the planet’s warmer system.