Antarctic is losing ice ‘nearly twice as fast as ten years ago’

by kenai 8 Replies latest jw friends

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  kenai

  Hi all, love this board. Here is something some of you might find interesting:

  http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article3181944.ece

  The rate of annual ice loss in the Antarctic has increased by almost 80 billion tonnes in a decade, a study has found. Measurements using satellite radar readings revealed that in parts of the continent the rate of loss has speeded up by 140 per cent since 1996. Global warming is thought to be among the most likely factors and the data provides one of the most detailed assessments yet of the changes. The findings challenge suggestions from previous research that the overall quantities of ice and snow in Antarctica could increase over the next century because of greater snowfall. The total annual loss was estimated at 196 billion tonnes, almost 50 times as much as the 4 billion tonnes of drinking water supplied to Britain’s taps each year. The most extensive ice loss was found to be taking place in west Antarctica, where an estimated 132 billion tonnes disappeared in 2006. The annual loss increased by about 49 billion tonnes more than in 1996, when about 83 billion tonnes was calculated to have slipped into the water, mainly as icebergs. Related Links

  On the Antarctic Peninsula the rate of loss was even greater, though the overall quantities were lower. It was estimated that the amount of ice loss rose from 25 billion to 60 billion tonnes. Quantities of ice and snow disappearing from east Antarctica were thought to be much lower, at 4 billion tonnes each year, and researchers concluded that the rate was unchanged since 1996.

  Professor Jonathan Bamber, of the University of Bristol, was part of an international team of scientists that mapped changes in ice cover around 85 per cent of Antarctica’s coast.

  “What we have done is make some observations that show a very substantial and dramatic change in the breadth of the ice sheet,” he said. “It suggests changes in the climate system could have a rapid influence on the health of the Antarctic ice sheet.

  “This is another observation that confirms the trend in what’s happening around the world. We’ve seen the same thing in mountain glaciers, in Greenland, Patagonia and the same thing in Alaska. We are seeing the same thing everywhere we look.”

  He was unable to say for certain that global warming was to blame but the ice loss from Antarctica is thought to be caused by warmer water temperatures, which in turn are caused by climate change and altered ocean currents. The loss is thought to be partly attributable to processes that take place over thousands of years.

  “How it reponds to climate takes place over many different time scales,” Professor Bamber said. “There are changes taking place now that are a result of what happened to the climate 12,000 years ago.” Temperature rises caused by climate change are more pronounced at the poles than in other regions of the world but researchers have an incomplete understanding of the mechanisms controlling ice in Antarctica.

  Data from the study will help scientists to establish how much ice and snow will be lost over the next century. Loss of ice on Antarctica has the potential to be the biggest cause of rising sea levels in coming decades. If it all melted, which scientists consider highly unlikely by 2100, it is estimated that sea level would rise 61-65 metres, compared with 7 metres if all of Greenland’s glaciers were to melt.
• 

  Mincan

  Anyone who hasn't come to the conclusion we are totally F***ED haven't come to the right conclusion, and hasn't read nearly enough on the matter.

  Good overview of what's very likely going to happen based on extrapolated scientific data, etc (pretty scientific so be warned) is "The Last Generation: How Mother Nature Will Take Her Revenge For Climate Change" by Fred Pearce.

  I want everyone to know about Wadham's Chimneys in the North Atlantic. There used to be 12 a century ago, now there is 1 that is extremely weak. This is the far end of the Gulf Stream, which is dying, already slowed 15%.
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  moshe

  When we see the beachfront mansions in Florida all going up for sale, we will know the big meltdown is only a few years away. I think humans will be surprised just how fast the tipping point is reached It takes as much energy to melt a pound of ice as it does to raise it's temperature to 80 degrees. Once it melts, the temperatures will rapidly rise on Earth.
• 

  SWALKER

  It looks as if change is inevitable...Welcome to the board!

  Swalker
• 

  Mincan

  First major signs of north atlantic conveyor shutdown

  author: lokal

  http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1602579,00.html this is the sign that climate change has reached a critical point: the only times in geologic history that this has happened, there has been an ice age within a few years. fasten your seatbelts, start doing permaculture, and enjoy the ride!

  May 08, 2005 Britain faces big chill as ocean current slows Jonathan Leake, Science Editor CLIMATE change researchers have detected the first signs of a slowdown in the Gulf Stream — the mighty ocean current that keeps Britain and Europe from freezing. They have found that one of the "engines" driving the Gulf Stream — the sinking of supercooled water in the Greenland Sea — has weakened to less than a quarter of its former strength. The weakening, apparently caused by global warming, could herald big changes in the current over the next few years or decades. Paradoxically, it could lead to Britain and northwestern and Europe undergoing a sharp drop in temperatures. Such a change has long been predicted by scientists but the new research is among the first to show clear experimental evidence of the phenomenon. Peter Wadhams, professor of ocean physics at Cambridge University, hitched rides under the Arctic ice cap in Royal Navy submarines and used ships to take measurements across the Greenland Sea. "Until recently we would find giant 'chimneys' in the sea where columns of cold, dense water were sinking from the surface to the seabed 3,000 metres below, but now they have almost disappeared," he said. "As the water sank it was replaced by warm water flowing in from the south, which kept the circulation going. If that mechanism is slowing, it will mean less heat reaching Europe." Such a change could have a severe impact on Britain, which lies on the same latitude as Siberia and ought to be much colder. The Gulf Stream transports 27,000 times more heat to British shores than all the nation's power supplies could provide, warming Britain by 5-8C. Wadhams and his colleagues believe, however, that just such changes could be well under way. They predict that the slowing of the Gulf Stream is likely to be accompanied by other effects, such as the complete summer melting of the Arctic ice cap by as early as 2020 and almost certainly by 2080. This would spell disaster for Arctic wildlife such as the polar bear, which could face extinction. Wadhams's submarine journeys took him under the North Polar ice cap, using sonar to survey the ice from underneath. He has measured how the ice has become 46% thinner over the past 20 years. The results from these surveys prompted him to focus on a feature called the Odden ice shelf, which should grow out into the Greenland Sea every winter and recede in summer. The growth of this shelf should trigger the annual formation of the sinking water columns. As sea water freezes to form the shelf, the ice crystals expel their salt into the surrounding water, making it heavier than the water below. However, the Odden ice shelf has stopped forming. It last appeared in full in 1997. "In the past we could see nine to 12 giant columns forming under the shelf each year. In our latest cruise, we found only two and they were so weak that the sinking water could not reach the seabed," said Wadhams, who disclosed the findings at a meeting of the European Geosciences Union in Vienna. The exact effect of such changes is hard to predict because currents and weather systems take years to respond and because there are two other areas around the north Atlantic where water sinks, helping to maintain circulation. Less is known about how climate change is affecting these. However, Wadhams suggests the effect could be dramatic. "One of the frightening things in the film The Day After Tomorrow showed how the circulation in the Atlantic Ocean is upset because the sinking of cold water in the north Atlantic suddenly stops," he said. "The sinking is stopping, albeit much more slowly than in the film — over years rather than a few days. If it continues, the effect will be to cool the climate of northern Europe." One possibility is that Europe will freeze; another is that the slowing of the Gulf Stream may keep Europe cool as global warming heats the rest of the world — but with more extremes of weather.

  homepage: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1602579,00.html
• 

  kenai

  Hi Mincan, as much as I hated to face reality I had to change my views on GW and yes you are absolutely right about us being F*$ed up. I've been reading discussions on this board for a while now and I think a big part of the problem in facing up to reality is the baggage we carry from 'doom's day cults' like Witnesses which left us with attitude that is wary of a very notion that catastrophes can befall us all. We forget though what happen to Menoan civilization or Easter island people. It is not god but nature simply balances itself in the end, in process though it can destroy the very way of life we have taken for granted.
• 

  cultswatter

  The movie "The day after tomorrow " predicted that OOOOH way twilight zone
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  Mincan

  Yes, it's a paradox. In the latest interglacial period (so called holocene) humans created the very conditions that allowed them to flourish (releasing the planet's stored carbon that it had taken 4.5 billion years for it to tuck away safely from the thin little candy shell we call the biosphere; make no mistake, this was being done 10,000 years ago with specific targets such as forests, we liked the savannas and created them. An excellent book to read on this subject is "The World Without Us" by Alan Weisman) to and which in the end will allow them to be decimated. Civilisation was made possible by cereal crops, and domestication of specific animals, the conditions for these things to thrive is a very fine margin.

  Mincan's Recommended Reading:

  Anything by Jared Diamond, specifically "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Succeed or Fail" and "Guns, Germs, and Steel"

  For an outlandish viewpoint, turn to Derrick Jensen "Endgame" Parts I and II, and "The Culture of Make Believe" (Ive even been banned from his forum for disagreeing slightly with his point of view; been reinstated...lol)

  Daniel Quinn, for an anti-propaganda viewpoint of civilisation as a concept and of memes, the genes of our minds.

  and of course all the other books I've suggested
• 

  SickofLies

  Welcome to the board!

  Although I fear you may have opened up the flood gates for all the global warming deniers out there!