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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.......

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/11/foehn-winds-melt-ice-shelves-antarctic-peninsula-larsen-c/

This goes some way to explaining the issues the peninsula has been /is suffering with?

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

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-38079838

A look at the Ocean cavity below P.I.G. and dating for its development in the mid 1940's

You can find the original paper in the article link?

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

http://www.sciencealert.com/the-west-antarctic-ice-shelf-is-breaking-up-from-the-inside-researchers-find

Well we all witnessed the last crevasse and calve but now we can see that the disruption occurs far from the calving zone raising prospects of rapid retreat of the Glacier as we have seen occur to the Greenland Ocean terminating Glaciers over the past 50 years?

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

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/12/16/warm-ocean-water-is-slamming-into-and-melting-the-biggest-glacier-in-east-antarctica/?utm_term=.4181451b6051

We've had a proper look at Totten and it conforms that it is indeed melting from below. It is fed from an ice field that is below sea level so rapid retreat into that basin is possible. Loss of Totten = 3.5m of sea level rise.

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

Hi Knocks!

The crack put on 10km from the start of Jan to the 19th. It has 20km to go which is nothing really. with a new moon on the 28th I think we might have the forcing to take that out?

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  • 4 weeks later...
Posted
  • Location: Ireland, probably South Tipperary
  • Weather Preferences: Cold, Snow, Windstorms and Thunderstorms
  • Location: Ireland, probably South Tipperary

Hey folks, were hosting a Q&A session on reddit.com/r/science today that might be of interest to some here

American Geophysical Union AMA: Hi Reddit, I’m Chris Borstad, and I’m here to talk about the peculiar nature of snow and ice related to avalanches and glaciers. Ask Me Anything!

Hi Reddit! I am Chris Borstad, Associate Professor of Snow and Ice Physics at the University Centre in Svalbard (UNIS). Located at 78 degrees north, UNIS (www.unis.no) is the northernmost institution of higher education and research in the world. I am fascinated by snow and ice, and my research relates to processes that cause ice and snow to fracture. Most recently I have been studying the Larsen C ice shelf in Antarctica, where a massive crack in the ice is about to release an iceberg the size of Delaware! By improving our understanding of what caused this event and what the consequences are for the ice shelf, we hope to make better predictions of how other ice shelves around Antarctica will respond to a changing climate. I also study the physics of snow avalanches, a research interest that originated with a desire not to get caught in an avalanche myself while skiing in the backcountry. The most destructive types of avalanches occur after a large volume of snow is undercut by fractures. I am working to better understand these fascinating natural phenomena so that we can hopefully keep people out of harm’s way.
I will be back to answer your questions at 12 pm ET, Ask me Anything!
Follow me on twitter @RogueChrisB.

https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/5uer59/american_geophysical_union_ama_hi_reddit_im_chris/

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  • 1 month later...
Posted
  • Location: Napton on the Hill Warwickshire 500ft
  • Weather Preferences: Snow and heatwave
  • Location: Napton on the Hill Warwickshire 500ft

Amazing changes in extent who would have thought 2/3 yrs ago.

VISHOP_Extent.png

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

We will need to see another couple of years of similar to confirm that we have now entered the period I had been cautioning about through the 'growth years?

With the Ozone hole now on the mend its influences must now be waning and it would appear that the Pacific 'Naturals' are now flipped to the opposite of those that aided sea ice expansion.

So, I have been expecting , nae! warning!, of the change to sea ice coverage and the onset of rapid coastal warming leading to the loss of most of the remaining ice shelves over the coming decades throughout the noughties. Sadly my concerns were over ridden by folk demanding that what we were seeing was a 'natural' balancing act with the Arctic. Sadly such nonsense is now exposed...... how can a warming planet result in long term sea ice expansion in the first place?

I fear the next expansion of sea ice around Antarctica will be the flotillas of ice bergs as the shelfs let go and unleash the feed glaciers behind and we start seeing the behaviours we now see around Greenland occurring around Antarctica.

 

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Posted
  • Location: Camborne
  • Location: Camborne

Parts of giant East Antarctic Ice Sheet may be more sensitive to climate change as glaciers melt from beneath:

Antarctica’s sleeping ice giant could wake soon

The massive East Antarctic Ice Sheet looks stable from above — but it’s a dangerously different story below.

http://www.nature.com/news/antarctica-s-sleeping-ice-giant-could-wake-soon-1.21808

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Posted
  • Location: Camborne
  • Location: Camborne

Water is streaming across Antarctica

New survey finds liquid flow more widespread than thought

Quote

In the first such continent-wide survey, scientists have found extensive drainages of melangel delighter flowing over parts of Antarctica's ice during the brief summer. Researchers already knew such features existed, but assumed they were confined mainly to Antarctica's fastest-warming, most northerly reaches. Many of the newly mapped drainages are not new, but the fact they exist at all is significant; they appear to proliferate with small upswings in temperature, so warming projected for this century could quickly magnify their influence on sea level. An accompanying study looks at how such systems might influence the great ice shelves ringing the continent, which some researchers fear could collapse, bringing catastrophic sea-level rises. Both studies appear this week in the leading scientific journal Nature.

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2017-04/teia-wis041717.php

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Posted
  • Location: Camborne
  • Location: Camborne

The Antarctic: Irreversible ocean warming threatens the Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf

Quote

By the second half of this century, rising air temperatures above the Weddell Sea could set off a self-amplifying melangel delighter feedback cycle under the Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf, ultimately causing the second-largest ice shelf in the Antarctic to shrink dramatically. Climate researchers at the Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) recently made this prediction in a new study, which can be found in the latest issue of the Journal of Climate, released today. In the study, the researchers use an ice-ocean model created in Bremerhaven to decode the oceanographic and physical processes that could lead to an irreversible inflow of warm water under the ice shelf - a development that has already been observed in the Amundsen Sea.

Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2017-05-irreversible-ocean-threatens-filchner-ronne-ice.html#jCp

https://phys.org/news/2017-05-irreversible-ocean-threatens-filchner-ronne-ice.html

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Posted
  • Location: Lower Brynamman, nr Ammanford, 160-170m a.s.l.
  • Location: Lower Brynamman, nr Ammanford, 160-170m a.s.l.

The crack in the Larsen C ice shelf that forced the closure of Halley VI seems to be accelerating:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-40113393

Edited by Crepuscular Ray
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Posted
  • Location: Dorset
  • Location: Dorset

Very sad to hear about Larsen c and the likely break in the 5-10 days. 

I remember talking about Larsen c nearly 10 years, probably in here! :)

it seemed obvious that once Larsen b had started to erode currents would drive the ever warmer deeper waters to carve out the rest of Larsen. The feedback has been quite staggering. 

Larsen c became really vulnerable a few years ago and imho we've been lucky it's lasted this long. 

The biggest sadness for me though is that is has shown perfectly that once these great shelves start to go, there is just no stopping them. It's not reversible. 

Also the theory that they act as bottle stoppers to the great glaciers moving ice from the continent to the sea has been proven correct. 

All in all a very bad set of theories For the scientists to have been right about. 

I just wish we had the money for exploration under the ice shelves as this is surely the area they are

the most fragile and might give us a decade or so of warning. At the moment I think we have 18 mths to 2 years. 

Edited by Iceberg
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  • 2 weeks later...
Posted
  • Location: Camborne
  • Location: Camborne

January 2016 extensive summer melt in West Antarctica favoured by strong El Niño

Quote

Over the past two decades the primary driver of mass loss from the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) has been warm ocean water underneath coastal ice shelves, not a warmer atmosphere. Yet, surface melt occurs sporadically over low-lying areas of the WAIS and is not fully understood. Here we report on an episode of extensive and prolonged surface melting observed in the Ross Sea sector of the WAIS in January 2016. A comprehensive cloud and radiation experiment at the WAIS ice divide, downwind of the melt region, provided detailed insight into the physical processes at play during the event. The unusual extent and duration of the melting are linked to strong and sustained advection of warm marine air toward the area, likely favoured by the concurrent strong El Niño event. The increase in the number of extreme El Niño events projected for the twenty-first century could expose the WAIS to more frequent major melt events.

https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms15799

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

I take it we're all well aware that Antarctic Sea Ice has been running at lowest and has been since re-freeze began?

This means that for the second year in a row we are seeing global sea ice cover also at record lows.?

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

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-40321674

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jul/12/giant-antarctic-iceberg-breaks-free-of-larsen-c-ice-shelf

We will now find out what this means for the ice behind? Is it flawed and so will collapse? Will the feed ice speed up?

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Posted
  • Location: Mid Essex
  • Location: Mid Essex

If something had done 40 years ago would have made the slightest difference?  Not that I am sure what tthat something would have been.  Anyone got any reasonable ideas?

Apart from mankind reducing its willingness to procreate I cannot see there is anything in the longer term that will prevent a complete meltdown in most parameters we would consider reasonable. 

Mother Nature has a nasty habit of re adjusting things. 

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