More on unprecedented melt in West Antarctica
Photo: National Science Foundation
Scientists say a recently identified area in West Antarctica – which experienced melting and re-freezing over a week of balmy temperatures in 2005 – shows that the Antarctic continent is being affected by climate change.
This particular melt – over an area roughly the size of California – surprised scientists. It was far inland, many hundreds of kilometers or over 500 miles from the ocean. Previously, warming effects weren’t seen outside the Antarctic Peninsula and areas near the coast.
Son Nghiem at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory said that the new finding shows Antarctica’s vulnerability to climate change.
NASA’s QuikScat satellite picked up on large ice clumps that formed in low snow layers after the melt. Nghiem said the danger of such a melt is that the liquid water produced might seep down deep enough to lubricate Anarctic ice sheets, causing more ice to flow to the sea.
Son Nghiem: If the liquid water becomes more available for more intense, and more prolonged melt, then the water can come directly down to the ocean.
Nghiem emphasized the importance of continuing to observe Antarctica for developing warming trends. Our thanks today to NASA: explore, discover, understand.
According to news reports, the satellite that observed the melt is in danger of failing.
Earth & Sky: California-sized melt in Antarctica discovered
Earth Observatory: NASA FINDS VAST REGIONS OF WEST ANTARCTICA MELTED IN RECENT PAST
New York Times: Analysis Finds Large Antarctic Area Has Melted
Cool Antarctica – the effects of global warming
Our thanks to:
Son Nghiem
Principal Scientist
NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
California Institute of Technology
Pasedena, California
Interesting finding that needs to be monitered.
But, what is meant by “West” Antartica?
Too much unreal happy talk and melodious “chin music” regarding endless global economic growth at the G-8 Summit by our leaders, the modern day heirs of Ozymandias, king of kings….. woefully inadequate action on global warming, environmental pollution, biodiversity loss, natural resources dissipation, Earth’s degradation….. a colossal wreck in the offing. The stage is being set for the greatest calamity in human history. What a tragedy!
Global carbon levels spiraling
May 22, 2007
By Dan Vergano, USA TODAY
Warnings about global warming may not be dire enough, according to a climate study that describes a runaway-train acceleration of industrial carbon dioxide emissions.
Fueled by rapid growth in coal-reliant China, rates of carbon dioxide emission from industrial sources increased from 2000 to 2004 “at a rate that is over three times the rate during the 1990s,” says a report released by the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Carbon dioxide, released when coal, oil and natural gas burn, is a major “greenhouse gas,” so named because it absorbs the sun’s heat in the atmosphere.
“We have had rapid economic growth worldwide powered on traditional carbon-emitting sources,” says study author Christopher Field of the Carnegie Institution of Washington’s branch in Stanford, Calif.
The study compared Energy Department carbon dioxide emissions numbers with economic growth figures from the International Monetary Fund and United Nations. The figures show that “carbon intensity,” roughly the amount of carbon dioxide emitted to produce something in an economy, dropped worldwide after 1980. It shot up after 2000 in high-growth China and stalled elsewhere.
“The report is saying that if you wonder what side of global warming’s effects — droughts, warming and others — we are going to get, a little or a lot, we are going to get a lot,” says Angela Anderson of the Washington, D.C.-based National Environmental Trust.
In February, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicted a 7.2-degree rise in surface temperatures by 2100 if the world pursues growth reliant on fossil fuels, producing more severe droughts, floods and heat waves.
The study’s real-world carbon dioxide emissions rate exceeds the panel’s assumptions.
Carbon dioxide is responsible for about half of the 1-degree increase in average surface temperatures attributable to human activities in the past century, the climate change panel says.
Countries are using more energy, and “no region is decarbonising its energy supply,” the study says.
“This should serve as a notice to the global community that renewed and stronger efforts are necessary in this political, economic and scientific milieu,” says Robert Andres of the Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center at Oak Ridge (Tenn.) National Laboratory, who was not part of the study.
The results show that the world is burning more coal than ever. “Coal is abundant and cheap but much dirtier than other fossil fuels,” Field says.
More good scientific data about the oceans…....
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/oceans/la-oceans-flash-day1,0,7544983.flash
Thank you, Steve … the first picture in the photo section of the link you just provided was pretty shocking. It showed a pipe below the ocean surface, with raw sewage pouring out …
Oh, and I guess everyone has heard this story by now:
Munitions Dumping at Sea
Horrific image of dolphin burned by military waste dumped into the ocean …
How can we humans be so unconscious?
In 1983, Dansgaard & Oeschger were among the first people to examine two ice cores, each approximately one mile long, brought up from the Greenland Ice Sheet. Laborious studies of the cores proved that global warming occurs every 1500 to 2500 years – even during the Ice Ages and interglacial climate swings the 1500-year cycle was superimposed in the core.
The Earth’s elliptical orbit is on a 100,000-year cycle. The axial tilt variation is on a 41,000-year cycle. The “wobble” of the Earth on its axis is on a 23,000-year cycle. But it is the 1,500 year solar-driven cycle that is responsible for our “global warming” – which cannot be prevented. However, history proves that it will bring benefits to man, especially a reduction in famine/hunger, species survival, and a longer worldwide life expectancy.
The “sky is not falling”.
Okolona,
Undoubtedly, you’re speaking of the Milankovitch cycles. According to this article by George Kaplan at US Naval Observatory, “The exact mechanisms by which the relatively modest variations in the Earth’s orbit and axis direction might result in such large effects as the ice ages are not well established.”
I have read reports, tentatively saying that increased solar activity could be responsible for 20% to 30% of the global warming now taking place. Whether the sky is falling or not, are you suggesting that ALL global warming is due to natural causes and not at all related to human-induced CO2 emissions?
Bruce McClure
Dear Okolona,
The behaviors of alarmists and “Chicken-littles” are not ever helpful. I agree with that. However, when good scientific evidence indicates the potential risk of dangerous climate change, resulting from the human production, consumption and propagation now overspreading the surface of Earth, then open and broad public discussion of these dangers becomes necessary.
Afterall, what if dangerous climate climate IS driven by global human overgrowth activities and also IS imminent? Could a sensible case not be made for at least LIMITING THE INCREASES in the seemingly endless and patently unsustainable growth of global production, per human consumption and reproduction activities of our species?
With thanks for your comments,
Steve
Bruce, please re-read my previous post: “it is the 1,500 year SOLAR-DRIVEN cycle that is responsible for our global warming.”
There is no evidence to date that fossil fuels have overheated the world in the past or now. The Greenhouse “Theory” is that more greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere will trap more heat, but no one knows whether the amounts of heat trapped by all CO2 increases (man-made or naturally occurring) are significant. Nothing at all in the Earth’s climate history confirms CO2 as a driver of climate warming.
Most of the current warming occurred BEFORE 1940. AFTER 1940 temperatures DECLINED until 1975, despite a HUGE surge in industrial CO2 during that period. As a result of numerous studies of isotopes of oxygen, carbon, beryllium, and argon trapped in glacier ice, of fossil pollen records, and of algae cyst assemblages in lake and seabed sediments, researchers such as Nicolas Caillon of the French Atomic Energy Commission have concluded that CO2 is not the cause of global warming but instead CO2 is the result of global warming. The ocean gives up CO2 when it and the atmosphere warm – simple as that.
The Roman empire flourished in a warm climactic period, and collapsed during the colder Dark Ages, which was followed by The Medieval Warming (950 – 1300), a period of abundant crops and stable weather.
The climate event that we should worry about is the inevitable (though maybe thousands of years away) next big Ice Age. Humanity and food production will be forced closer to the equator. Ohio and Indiana will be encased in mile thick ice. Wildlife will become extremely challenged and keeping warm will become a critical issue day and night.
A deep-seated guilt about the successes of capitalism and the cushy lives we live in the U.S., along with a desire by many for a socialist or one-government world, is causing humans to panic about and fabricate horrible scenarios, when in fact our planet will be returning to the finest climate it has known in a million years.
And Steve, the answer is no.
Okolona,
As requested, I reread your previous post. Unless you specify otherwise, I’m forced to conclude that your answer to my question is “Yes, ALL global warming is due to natural causes and not at all related to human-induced CO2 emissions.
Bruce
You got it Bruce. Paste and read: http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=PressRoom.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=0df9b3cd-802a-23ad-4984-5ac0c6d42605
Have you heard of “Sublimation”? Just because it happens in your freezer doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen on a continental basis.