Earth Ice Free?

[hh5]

If one day the earth is ice free, what will we do?

 

drape white curtains on top of antarctica or at the north pole put a bone yard there and drape a white curtain there to resimulate or stimulate the earth former climate?

 

 

goto ... it shows a nice before and after of antartica with or w/o snow while explaining the nasa new mapping tech

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/06/130605-nasa-map-sunken-mountains-antarctica-ice/

 

 

 

[Graeme]

Given that we're talking about thousands of years into the future, I suspect we'll have colonised Antarctica well before the ice all melts. How quickly we colonise it will depend on the mineral resources that are discovered in those mountains. If there's valuable ore found there, I think we'll have thriving communities in Antarctica before the end of this century.

 

There is approximately 25,000,000 km³ of ice on Antarctica. The current rate of ice loss is uncertain, but it has been estimated from the GRACE satellites to be about 152 km³ per year. If we get conservative and assume that the average rate of ice loss will, over time, average 2500 km3 per year (more than 10 times the current rate), then it will take 10,000 years for all of that ice to melt. There's a good chance that we'll have a new ice age before then

 

A more realistic reason for Antarctica to become ice free is the same reason why it used to be ice free - tectonic plate shifts. Apparently, some scientists believe that Antarctica used to be tropical in the not too distant (geologically speaking) past - only 52 million years ago.

Edited June 6, 2013 by Graeme

[MikeL]

At my age, I can't get too concerned.  Any other comment from me is likely to be considered political. 

[Palantir]

If the earth reaches the stage of being ice free then the vast majority of the surface will be uninhabitable in the parameters we currently use.

Maybe populations will have moved underground and developed new ways of producing food.

[Thorn Wilde]

If the earth reaches the stage of being ice free then the vast majority of the surface will be uninhabitable in the parameters we currently use.

Maybe populations will have moved underground and developed new ways of producing food.

 

Or to mountain ranges. We'll live in the Rockies, Andes, Alps, Himalayas, etc. Countries such as Nepal and Tibet will be pretty decently off.

[Zombie]

Monitoring over the last 50 years shows sea ice retreating at both poles. As more sea is exposed so it absorbs more solar energy [ice reflects it] and gets warmer. There are detailed records of sea levels going back more than 100 years. These show sea levels have risen about 8" since 1870, and at an increasing rate more recently. The main reason for sea level rise is thermal expansion due to increased sea temperature.

There's nothing political here, it is fact. It's why Russia has been able to increase shipping along the Siberian coast this century and why there is serious planning by commercial shippers, like Nordic Bulk Carriers, to be able to use the fabled "North West Passage" every summer within 50 years as sea ice retreats further. Commercial businesses don't waste their money on fanciful schemes - they expect this to be reality soon.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/jul/05/arctic-shipping-trade-routes
 

 

[hh5]

The scientist believe that Yonaguni Monument is at least 10,000 years old

so ice free since then could be 20,000 to 175,000 since the monument was above water

 

is it beyond our ability to try to bring the earth climate back to normal?

[Zombie]

is it beyond our ability to try to bring the earth climate back to normal?

 

Question makes no sense. There's no such thing as "normal".  Never has been, never will be.

 

The thing that's not "normal" is the existence of human beings on this planet.  We've been around for a mere spec of time and we only exist because current planetary conditions allow us to exist. If we cease to exist, planet Earth will continue doing its thing very nicely without us.

 

We need Earth, but Earth does not need us

Edited June 6, 2013 by Zombie

[hh5]

Its easy to say man should give up to the natural course of life on earth for the damages it has done

but man doesn't give up if it tries by finding solutions 

 

example anti-desertification

 

 

 

AFRICA: UN backs Great Green Wall anti-desertification project (26/04/13)

 

The UN is backing a new project called the Great Green Wall, which will involve 11 countries in a belt across Africa in planting trees, with the aim of holding back the Sahara desert.

 

The Wall, an initiative spearheaded by African governments, will be around 15km wide and will stretch around 7000km from Senegal in the west to Djibouti in the east, passing through Burkina Faso, Chad, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria and Sudan.

 

The programme aims to support local communities’ efforts in sustainably managing and using forests, a key theme of the recent 10th session of the UN Forum on Forests in Istanbul.

 

The trees are expected to provide a barrier against winds and will hold moisture in the air and soil, enabling agriculture to flourish, reducing erosion, enhancing biodiversity and improving resilience to climate change, the UN says.

Lis Stedman

 

Fighting desertification in China

Beijing launched an ambitious plan a decade ago, but the desert continues to swallow up large tracts of green land.

 

Desertification is too important for Canada to ignore

The deterioration of dry-land ecosystems has already created desert-like “dead zones” that can no longer support human life in places such as sub-Saharan Africa. No region is immune. Close to three-quarters of North America’s dry lands, including parts of the Prairies, are vulnerable to drought. And sudden loss of agricultural productivity can be devastating to farm communities across Canada.

Under the UN convention, close to 195 countries are working to improve living conditions for some of the world’s most vulnerable people, to maintain and restore land and soil productivity and to reduce the effects of drought, including food and water shortages, malnutrition, mass migrations, increased political instability and war.

Many aid and development experts believe this international agreement is critical to advancing global economic, political and food security. Canada is the only country to walk away.

The convention is a rare example of people from around the world coming together to address the root causes of environmental and social crises. It was passed shortly after drought-related crop failures and resulting malnutrition, starvation and mass migrations ravaged the Horn of Africa in the 1980s in places like Somalia and Ethiopia.

 

Initiatives to Combat Desertification funded through Australia's Overseas Aid Program

Australia's overseas aid program assists developing countries in reducing poverty and achieving sustainable development. Many aid activities address the environmental causes of poverty, including desertification. The Australian Government, through the Australian Agency for International Development (AusAID), is currently supporting a range of bilateral programs to combat desertification in developing countries with a total funding commitment of approximately $58.5 million. AusAID also administers contributions to a range of multilateral organisations and Australian NGOs with a mandate for addressing desertification.

Australia's experience in tackling land degradation has been important in helping other countries to address their resource management problems. The Australian Government, through the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR), funds agricultural research projects executed collaboratively by research institutions in Australia and developing countries on subject areas that are of high mutual priority. Land degradation and desertification are important focal points for this research. The Australian Government also funds international agricultural research centres, many of which operate within the framework of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural research (CGIAR). Several of these centres are active in desertification research, and are supported by Australia both through core funding and funding for specific desertification related projects.

At present ACIAR has 16 projects related to desertification, involving a total funding commitment of over $11 million. These project activities are concentrated in China, India, southern Africa and Southeast Asia. In 2001/02, ACIAR distributed core contributions of $1.55 million to four international agricultural research centres active in desertification research.

 

 

 

Question makes no sense. There's no such thing as "normal".  Never has been, never will be.

 

The thing that's not "normal" is the existence of human beings on this planet.  We've been around for a mere spec of time and we only exist because current planetary conditions allow us to exist. If we cease to exist, planet Earth will continue doing its thing very nicely without us.

 

We need Earth, but Earth does not need us

Edited June 6, 2013 by hh5

[Graeme]

If a "normal" climate is defined as the long term average, then Earth's "normal" climate is an Ice Age. Personally, I prefer to live in a climate that's not "normal". The Roman Warm Period in history had temperatures that were probably warmer than today (though there's a lot of uncertainty - it's based on things like they used to grow grapes further north in England than is currently possible, implying that the average temperature in northern England was warmer than it is today) - that sounds nice to me

 

Studies indicate that warming the Earth a couple of degrees from the baseline 1961-1990 most climate organisations use would actually be beneficial for the planet - cold is a big killer, as well as having a negative impact on agriculture. It's only if the temperature starts to get over that does it potentially become a net negative impact.

[Zombie]

 

Studies indicate that warming the Earth a couple of degrees from the baseline 1961-1990 most climate organisations use would actually be beneficial for the planet - cold is a big killer, as well as having a negative impact on agriculture. It's only if the temperature starts to get over that does it potentially become a net negative impact.

 

Sorry, Graeme

 

1. as a moderator it's unfair to make loaded posts like this that we mere mortals are not allowed to respond to

2. the concept of "normal", to describe the conditions on Earth that have prevailed during the very brief spell of human existence compared with the extremes of conditions that have comprised so much of the 4.5 billion years the Earth has existed, is both unscientific and absurd

3. likewise "beneficial for the planet" has no meaning - the planet simply doesn't care, it has no "plans for self-improvement" or "personal management strategy", it's just a ball of rock whizzing around an insignificant sun located in an outer spiral arm of the Milky Way galaxy

Edited June 6, 2013 by Zombie

[Palantir]

3. likewise "beneficial for the planet" has no meaning - the planet simply doesn't care, it has no "plans for self-improvement" or "personal management strategy", it's just a ball of rock whizzing around an insignificant sun located in an outer spiral arm of the Milky Way galaxy

 

Lol - shades of Monty Python! 

[W_L]

Somewhere in the not too distant future, I'll be drinking an iced coffee, not in fear of ice disappearance, but to the absurdity of man's fear in the betrayal of nature.

Edited June 10, 2013 by W_L

[Graeme]

Sorry, Graeme

 

1. as a moderator it's unfair to make loaded posts like this that we mere mortals are not allowed to respond to

2. the concept of "normal", to describe the conditions on Earth that have prevailed during the very brief spell of human existence compared with the extremes of conditions that have comprised so much of the 4.5 billion years the Earth has existed, is both unscientific and absurd

3. likewise "beneficial for the planet" has no meaning - the planet simply doesn't care, it has no "plans for self-improvement" or "personal management strategy", it's just a ball of rock whizzing around an insignificant sun located in an outer spiral arm of the Milky Way galaxy

Hi, Zombie,

 

1. I'm not posting as a moderator. If you think my post crossed a line, just let the forum moderation team know. My posts have been moderated before, and that's fine. I'm not above the rules I was aware that this is a potentially political topic, but I'm trying to stick to the science, not the politics.

 

2. I agree with you, which is why I put the word normal in double quotes. I was actually backing up your comment on the same subject earlier. Some people like to think that conditions from the baseline 1961-1990 period is "normal", and I was pointing out that if I use a different baseline, I get a different "normal".

 

3. Agreed, that was slopping phrasing on my behalf. I meant to say that a slightly warmer Earth would be beneficial for humanity overall. The planet, as you've said, doesn't care

 

Now, speaking of sticking to the science, there was a comment above about sea ice retreating at both poles. Here's the current graph of global sea ice from Cyrosphere Today (University of Illinios):

 

The long term trend shown is downwards, but the current situation is actually slight above the baseline average.

 

Arctic only - a steady downward trend:

 

Antarctic only - that's a small upward trend, not downward:

 

There's been lots of reports on the situation with the Arctic, but not much about how there doesn't appear to be an issue in the Antarctic....

[hh5]

how is anti-desertification doing in Australia?

 

Edited June 8, 2013 by hh5

[Graeme]

how is anti-desertification doing in Australia?

 

 

No idea. Most of Australia has been a desert for millennia, so I presume you're referring to farming practices that influenced the water table. To the best of my knowledge, practises have been changed to address that problem, but naturally it takes a long time for the water table to recover.

[hh5]

 

Antarctic ice is melting TEN TIMES faster than it was 600 years ago

Experts found the most rapid melt occurred in the past 50 years

Tests carried out on ice core on James Ross Island, Antarctic Peninsula

Temperatures up by 1.6 degrees Celsius over 600 years, they found

Summer ice is melting 10 times faster in the Antarctic than it was 600 years ago, with the most rapid melt occurring in the past 50 years. 

Researchers from the Australian National University and the British Antarctic Survey also discovered the ice melt is at its highest level in 1,000 years. 

'It's definitely evidence that the climate and the environment is changing in this part of Antarctica,' lead researcher Nerilie Abram said.

 

That shows the ice melt can increase dramatically in climate terms once temperatures hit a tipping point.

This is the first time it has been demonstrated that levels of ice melt on the Antarctic Peninsula have been particularly sensitive to increasing temperature during the 20th Century. 

 

'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.

In other parts of Antarctica, such as the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, the picture is more complex and it is not yet clear that the levels of recent ice melt and glacier loss are exceptional or caused by human-driven climate changes. 

 

Dr Abram concludes: 'This new ice core record shows that even small changes in temperature can result in large increases in the amount of melting in places where summer temperatures are near to 0°C, such as along the Antarctic Peninsula, and this has import'

This research was funded by the Natural Environment Research Council. 

Dr Abram is an Australian Research Council Queen Elizabeth II Fellow.

 

MOST DETAILED MAP OF ANTARCTICA YET

Scientists at the British Antarctic Survey have produced the most detailed map yet of Antarctica’s landmass.

Bedmap2 shows a landscape of mountain ranges and plains cut by gorges and valleys much deeper than previously seen.

In addition, the map allows scientists to analyse, in much greater detail, the bed below the Antarctic ice sheet.

The map reveals the volume of ice in Antarctica is 4.6 per cent greater than previously thought and that the the mean bed depth at 95 metres, is 60 metres lower than estimated. 

The volume of ice that is grounded with a bed below sea level is also 23 per cent greater than originally thought meaning there is a larger volume of ice that is susceptible to rapid melting. 

It also reveals the ice that rests just below sea level is vulnerable to warming from ocean currents. 

The new deepest point, under Byrd Glacier, is around 400 metres deeper than the previously identified deepest point.

 

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2309256/Antarctic-ice-melting-10-times-faster-600-years-ago.html#ixzz2VbexE03d 

Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

 

 

 

Nice article on THE MECHANICAL BEHAVIOR OF ICE

 

 

 

http://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/JOM/9902/Schulson-9902.html

 

The elastic behavior of ice is characterized by moderate anisotropy. At temperatures near the melting point, Young's modulus23 of single crystals varies by less than 30%, from 12 GPa along the least compliant direction (parallel to the c-axis) to 8.6 GPa along the most compliant direction (inclined to both the c- and a-axes). Along directions within the basal plane Young's modulus is 10 GPa. For randomly oriented polycrystals, typical values of Young's modulus and Poisson's ratio are 9.0 MPa and 0.33 at -5°C. Hobbs2 gives a more complete account and lists both the elastic stiffness and the elastic compliance tensors versus temperature.

 

 

 

Have you ever observe your ice cubes in a cup of liquid ... from hot to room temperature to refrigerated

As temperature goes up ... the gases in the ice expand and help break the ice lattice structure

 

the ice on the edges around the perimeter of the land are subject to the rising temperatures of the ocean

the heated air from our summer months flow over the land ... the combination causes the large ice masses to break because their lattices can no longer hold the weight of the big ice mass in place

 

fracturing ice ... refrozen ... and then thawed and then refrozen ... doesn't guarantee it will hold up another big mass of ice together

eventually you will have a lot of ice breaking off because of weak lattices even if u are at 0c

 

true, not in our lifetime will all the ice melt ... but we will witness bigger changes in weather

 

there are many things we could do to slow the damage we've done ... but business n politicians doesn't see the long term gains 

one idea is to do something with the Sahara desert in Africa ... if we can reduce the size of the desert ...

perhaps we can minimize the hurricanes we've been getting

already nations are helping out with Africa => getting them to become self sufficient

 

develop better technologies to reduce green house gases ... share the technology rather than sell it to make money

get lesser developed countries to comply with these newer standards

 

as long as we contribute to the rising temperature ... some future generation is going to witness a massive melt off of the ice

already there is a group of photographers going around the americas mountains retaking photographs done over 40 to 100 yrs ago

sharing with us the evidence of change ... ie: receding glaciers

 

 

A link between climate, ice melt, and volcanic eruptions is found

It has long been known that volcanic activity can cause short-term variations in climate. Now, researchers at the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel (Germany), together with colleagues from Harvard University (Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA) have found evidence that the reverse process also occurs: Climate affects volcanic activity. Their study is now online in the international journal “Geology”.

In 1991, it was a disaster for the villages nearby the erupting Philippine volcano Pinatubo. But the effects were felt even as far away as Europe. The volcano threw up many tons of ash and other particles into the atmosphere causing less sunlight than usual to reach the Earth’s surface. For the first few years after the eruption, global temperatures dropped by half a degree. In general, volcanic eruptions can have a strong short-term impact on climate. Conversely, the idea that climate may also affect volcanic eruptions on a global scale and over long periods of time is completely new. Researchers at GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel (Germany) and Harvard University in Massachusetts (USA) have now found strong evidence for this relationship from major volcanic eruptions around the Pacific Ocean over the past 1 million years. They have presented their results in the latest issue of the international journal “Geology”.

 

 

 

I do wonder if man didn't live on earth .... will the ice still melt and disappear?

perhaps its yes since in 4.5 billion years the sun will burn up the planet

that does say the sun will heat up the earth more as it gets older

 

i do wonder ... the dino .. I hear lived on earth for 100 million years ... how long will man live?

Edited June 8, 2013 by hh5

[Graeme]

Just a word of warning - don't confuse the Antarctic Peninsula with Antarctica. The first is a small part of the continent whose climate appears to be largely affected by the surrounding ocean currents. The continent itself has a different climatic pattern (the cover image on Nature a couple of years ago not withstanding - a subsequent paper showed that the approach taken in the earlier paper had artificially distributed the known warming of the peninsula across the rest of the continent to produce the result shown in that cover image).

 

I also had to raise eyebrows at the very first statement quoted above. I didn't realised we had detailed satellite records going back 600 years... because we certainly don't have any other sort of detailed records on Antarctica. Even our ground level temperature record is very spotty - with only a handful of stations and even they don't have continuous coverage due to the temperature sensors getting buried in snow from time to time. Now, if they made that claim based on some sort of proxy method of determining ice melt rates from 600 years ago, then we have to look at what sort of accuracy and resolution that proxy has, and is it able to be compared to current records?

 

As an example, the Vostok ice cores (taken from the ice above Lake Vostok) are well known for providing a detailed temperature (though the proxy of oxygen isotope ratios) and CO₂ (by direct measurement of trapped carbon dioxide) record going back thousands of years. However, the way those ice cores resulted indicates a problem on resolution. The snow falls on the ice and is slowly compacted until it forms another layer of ice. The problem is that that compaction time isn't quick, and until the ice forms, the atmosphere between the individual flakes of snow can intermingle with the atmosphere above. This means that while we have a detail record, the atmospheric data (oxygen and CO₂) is effectively averaged over a period of time - it's not an instantaneous record. The exact amount of averaging is variable, but it can be quite significant. From the Ice Core entry at Wikipedia:

 

 

The surface layer is snow in various forms, with air gaps between snowflakes. As snow continues to accumulate, the buried snow is compressed and forms firn, a grainy material with a texture similar to granulated sugar. Air gaps remain, and some circulation of air continues. As snow accumulates above, the firn continues to densify, and at some point the pores close off and the air is trapped. Because the air continues to circulate until then, the ice age and the age of the gas enclosed are not the same, and may differ by hundreds of years. The gas age–ice age difference is as great as 7 kyr in glacial ice from Vostok.

 

To understand the issue of resolution, suppose the ice core gas age difference is 200 years. That means that the atmospheric sample trapped in the ice is averaged over a period of up to 200 years (I say up to because it's uncertain how freely the gas can mix with layers above before the ice seals it off). Now, if you look at the modern temperature record and apply a 100 year averaging (as an example), the current warming is visible, but hardly significant (following on from the Little Ice Age). This raises the question of whether there was similar warming in the period covered by the ice cores, but it's not considered significant because it's been averaged out over a hundred years (or more)?

 

The amount of averaging is unknown. You can see from the Wikipedia article quote above that some people make the assumption that there is no averaging, and that the atmosphere at the time of the ice sealing is the same as the atmosphere that is above the snow at that time (ie. there is no delay in the atmosphere travelling through the snow and firn to down to where the firn is about to turn into ice), but since it's known that people can suffocate under snow, the rate of gas flow through snow is clearly fairly slow. To the best of my knowledge, there are no detailed studies on this to determine if the rate of gas mixing will significantly affect the mixture being recorded in the ice. From what I've read, various experts in the area have differing opinions.

 

So, going back to the quote that I raised eyebrows at, they've taken an ice core sample from the Antarctic Peninsula (known to be warming at a much higher rate than the rest of continent) and made claims about ice melt rates across the entire continent. Since the scientists who work in the area know about the differences between the peninsula and the rest of the continent, I'm guess it was the reporter who made the mistake.

 

I've been looking into this sort of thing for the last couple of years. I've been finding it quite interesting, though the maths can be challenging at times

Edited June 9, 2013 by Graeme

[hh5]

well its nice to find out that the ozone layer at the poles

* North will heal by 2040

* South will heal by 2065

barring any human habits or natural disasters

but in the mean time solar effects will still be around

I'm not sure that considers when we all follow the treaty to curb our pollution

the quicker the better unless politics gets in the way

 

I hope we don't get weirder storms but they are coming

[Thorn Wilde]

I read a theory a while back that stated that the way the temperatures are rising and the ice is melting will actually have the effect of bringing on another ice age in the northern hemisphere, because the ice that melts in the arctic will follow the currents down, mix in with the Gulf current that keeps the climate temperate in Northern Europe, cooling it down and causing the climate to get much, much colder. It was said that this would take a couple of hundred years. I have no source for this, it's all from memory, but it's an interesting thought.

[hh5]

Its slightly confused with either fresh water ice or salt water ice.

Fresh water ice melts quicker and should provide quicker n colder runoff than salt water ice

If its more salt water ... then couldn't less coolant for the streams be a problem as well as too much

another issue is that the sea level is rising and that slows down the effect of the gulf stream while we're getting more violent storms

 

the issue is when the barrier (the salt water ice) errodes quicker and exposes the fresh water ice

I read a theory a while back that stated that the way the temperatures are rising and the ice is melting will actually have the effect of bringing on another ice age in the northern hemisphere, because the ice that melts in the arctic will follow the currents down, mix in with the Gulf current that keeps the climate temperate in Northern Europe, cooling it down and causing the climate to get much, much colder. It was said that this would take a couple of hundred years. I have no source for this, it's all from memory, but it's an interesting thought.

Edited June 10, 2013 by hh5

[hh5]

Quote

Ice shelves grow through a combination of land ice flowing to the sea and snow accumulating on their surface. To determine how much ice and snowfall enters a specific ice shelf and how much makes it to an iceberg, where it may split off, the research team used a regional climate model for snow accumulation and combined the results with ice velocity data from satellites, ice shelf thickness measurements from NASA's Operation IceBridge -- a continuing aerial survey of Earth's poles -- and a new map of Antarctica's bedrock. Using this information, Rignot and colleagues were able to deduce whether the ice shelf was losing mass through basal melting or gaining it through the basal freezing of seawater.

 

In some places, basal melt exceeds iceberg calving. In other places, the opposite is true. But in total, Antarctic ice shelves lost 2,921 trillion pounds (1,325 trillion kilograms) of ice per year in 2003 to 2008 through basal melt, while iceberg formation accounted for 2,400 trillion pounds (1,089 trillion kilograms) of mass loss each year.

 

Basal melt can have a greater impact on ocean circulation than glacier calving. Icebergs slowly release melt water as they drift away from the continent. But strong melting near deep grounding lines, where glaciers lose their grip on the seafloor and start floating as ice shelves, discharges large quantities of fresher, lighter water near the Antarctic coastline. This lower-density water does not mix and sink as readily as colder, saltier water, and may be changing the rate of bottom water renewal.

 

"Changes in basal melting are helping to change the properties of Antarctic bottom water, which is one component of the ocean's overturning circulation," said author Stan Jacobs, an oceanographer at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, N.Y. "In some areas it also impacts ecosystems by driving coastal upwelling, which brings up micronutrients like iron that fuel persistent plankton blooms in the summer."

 

The study found basal melting is distributed unevenly around the continent. The three giant ice shelves of Ross, Filchner and Ronne, which make up two-thirds of the total Antarctic ice shelf area, accounted for only 15 percent of basal melting. Meanwhile, fewer than a dozen small ice shelves floating on "warm" waters (seawater only a few degrees above the freezing point) produced half of the total melt water during the same period. The scientists detected a similar high rate of basal melting under six small ice shelves along East Antarctica, a region not as well known because of a scarcity of measurements.

 

Edited June 15, 2013 by hh5

[hh5]

The modern meltdown of the Antarctic Ice Sheet mirrors the frozen continent's big thaw after the last ice age ended 20,000 years ago, a new study finds.

 

New ice core records from West Antarctica show the huge ice sheet started heating up about 20,000 to 22,000 years ago, 2,000 to 4,000 years earlier than previously thought. But in East Antarctica, which was higher in elevation, colder and drier than the West, the continent stayed in its deep-freeze cycle until 18,000 years ago. The results were published today (Aug. 14) in the journal Nature.

 

The mismatch between West and East is similar to today's Antarctica. Modern West Antarctica is one of the fastest-warming places on the planet. The middle of West Antarctica has warmed by 4.4 degreesFahrenheit (2.4 degrees Celsius) since 1958, three times as fast as the overall rate of global warming. But relatively little warming — half a degree or less — has been measured in East Antarctica. 

 

 

[hh5]

Earth's orbit can drastically affect our planet's climate. In fact, the wobbly nature of its path can cause our planet's ice ages. Now, though, scientists are uncovering a little bit more about the Northern Hemisphere's last ice age. It turns out that Antarctic warming began at least two, and perhaps four, millennia earlier than we previously thought.

 

Previous research indicated that the Northern Hemisphere's last ice age ended about 20,000 years ago. Most evidence in the Southern Hemisphere seems to show that its ice age ended about 2,000 years later. This suggests that the south was responding to warming in the north. Yet a new ice core seems to show that warming in West Antarctica was well underway 20,000 years ago.

 

 

[Celethiel]

hmm I may move to Antartica if it melts entirely...

Although I might pick Mars if that's an option by then