WP: Antarctic Glaciers' Sloughing Of Ice Has Scientists at Loss: "Highly disruptive" sea level rise?

[DeepModem Mom]

Antarctic Glaciers' Sloughing Of Ice Has Scientists at a Loss
By Marc Kaufman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, March 16, 2007; Page A02

Some of the largest glaciers in Antarctica and Greenland are moving in unusual ways and are losing increased amounts of ice to the sea, researchers said yesterday.

Although the changes in Greenland appear to be related to global warming, it remains unclear what is causing the glaciers of frigid Antarctica and their "ice streams" to lose ice to the ocean in recent years, the researchers said.

"In Greenland we know there is melting associated with the ice loss, but in Antarctica we don't really know why it's happening," said Duncan Wingham, an author of the review released today in Science magazine. "With so much of the world's ice captured in Antarctica, just the fact that we don't know why this is happening is a cause of some concern."

The Antarctic ice loss, which Wingham said is not caused by melting but rather by the pushing of ice streams into the ocean by several glaciers in the west of the continent, has picked up speed in recent years. But Wingham said that because researchers did not have good measures of the depth of the Antarctic ice shelf until about 10 years ago, scientists do not know whether this is a natural variation or a result of human activity....

***

Because such a large percentage of the world's ice is found in those two locations, scientists are carefully watching for signs of increased ice loss. If that process accelerates, researchers say, it could result in a substantial, and highly disruptive, increase in sea levels worldwide....

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/15/AR2007031501063.html?nav=most_emailed

[anotherdrew]

1. bring it on! maybe after the first cities drown we can start taking this seriously

if the best deniers can do is that sad, "the great global warming swindle" there's not much left to deny with.

[n2doc]

3. Does New Orleans count?

How about the Alabama and Mississippi coastlines? Sheesh.

Progressives don't wish mass death on ANYONE.

[Labors of Hercules]

5. mass death? no. Mass relocation is probably inevitable at some point.

it's all a matter of time.

[anotherdrew]

14. our response to New Orleans proves we won't/can't deal with this

I'm feeling rather pessimistic about the whole thing and just think of all the garbage, toxic waste, etc that'll get into the oceans if they do rise.

[Gloria]

4. Frankly, if a deluge hit Washington DC right about now, I'd cheer....

[leftchick]

7. Greenwich CT?

lets hope the Hedge Fund Mansions are the first to go....

http://www.uwec.edu/geography/Ivogeler/w367/history/greenwich,CT-estate.jpg

[rec_report]

10. No, as Ned Lamont lives there, and so do a lot of Lefties, :)

The Reichwing Hartford Courant used Ned Lamont's Greenwich against him, in the run-up to the 2006 'elections.'

[onehandle]

13. If whole cities are lost, kiss your ass goodbye.

It'll be too late for man at that point.

[Joanne98]

2. Dec 21st 2012. A rare alignment with the earth and sun aligning

with the galatic center. A huge black hole centered in the middle of the Milky Way..the Mayan calendar (dresdan codex) says the world ends that day. We drown.

I don't know if they're right but they did predict the EXACT DAY the Spanish arrived. Very spooky!

[kimmerspixelated]

6. I had heard about 2012

and The Mayan Calendar running out actually around(now or let's say early 00's) I think that stuff is fascinating, but I hate to fixate on things like that....remember the law of attractions....

[Joanne98]

8. If you google "Dresdan Codex" you will get websites on it....

What I think is probably going to happen is a pole reversal. That could explain why the poles are melting. I think it's interesting as Hell. I'm not fixated but I have to look. I'm a curious person with no will power not to.:freak:

[Odin2005]

9. LOL!!!

I surely don't find New Age BS "interesting as Hell." Stay away from that nonsense unless you want your brain to rot.

[Joanne98]

11. Not New Age. Pole reversal proven by science....

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/magnetic/reversals.html

[Odin2005]

18. that's just a magnetic reversal, not the "pole flip" the New Age wackos talk about.

Those wackos think that the planet is going to turn over or some such nonsense.

[muriel_volestrangler]

15. "pole reversal" is magnetic - nothing to do with melting

and pole reversals probably take several years - they're not an instantaneous event. As the Nova site you link to says: "Reversals take hundreds if not thousands of years to complete".

[Delphinus]

12. I've heard the explanation...

that time as we know it ends. Not that we die or humanity ceases to exist.

[truebrit71]

16. At least it's AFTER the Olympic Games in London that year...

...that I fully plan to attend...

;-)

[muriel_volestrangler]

17. No, not 'aligning with the galactic center'

There are however a lot of theories knocking around the Internet which use the end of this calendar cycle to predict the end of the world. They often also mention the fact that Dec 21st is the winter solstice, and that the Sun on the solstice that year is "aligned" with the plane of the galaxy. On the winter solstice, the Sun always has a Declination of -23.5 degrees, and a Right Ascension of 18 hours, but exactly where this is on the sky relative to more distant stars changes very slowly due to the "precession of the equinoxes". We have a posted answer explaining this effect but how it's important in this answer (and how it was first noticed) is by the fact that it moves the position of the equinoxes, and solstices with a period of 26,000 years in a complete circle around the sky westward along the ecliptic. So the position of the winter solstice moves 360 degrees in 26,000 years. That means that it moves 360/26000 = 0.01 degrees a year. Defining an exact boundary for the plane of the Milky Way is tough, but it's at least 10-20 degrees wide across much of the sky, meaning that the solstice can be described as being "in the plane of the Milky Way" for 700-1400 years! To put it another way, the winter solstice that just past (2005) was only 0.1 degrees away from where it will be in 2012, a distance smaller than the size of the Sun itself (which is about 0.5 degrees in diameter). In any case the Sun crosses the plane of the Galaxy twice every year as we orbit around it, with no ill effect on Earth.

http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/question.php?number=686

Below we give some data for the Galactic Center (this and all following positions for epoch 2000.0):

Right ascension 17 : 45.6 (h : m)
Declination -28 : 56 (deg : m)

http://www.seds.org/messier/more/mw.html

So it won't be particularly close on that date, and its position moves very slowly.

[Morgana LaFey]

19. To tell you the truth, I'm MUCH more worried about

August 13, 2010:

http://www.gaiamind.org/aug13-2010.html

[muriel_volestrangler]

23. And I'm worried about

the baggage retrieval system they've got at Heathrow.

[Zhade]

30. I'M worried about otherwise intelligent people buying this unsupported horseshit.

No wonder we're still barbaric.

[dysfunctional press]

26. omg...

:eyes:

i didn't know that there were still people that take that astrological bullshit seriously.

THAT'S what worries me...

[daleo]

21. If the earth goes around the sun once a year

Wouldn't the earth-sun-galactic-center alignment happen every year?

I try to be open to new ideas, but I just don't get this sort of reasoning.

[BushOut06]

24. Weren't there doomsday predictions back in '82 when all the planets lined up?

Back in '82, there was a very rare alignment of the planets. Some people were predicting all sorts of horrible things, saying the tidal forces would rip the planet apart. I think we'll be just fine.

[tanyev]

25. Many people interpret that not as end of the world, but the end of an age.

And the beginning of something new. :)

[lovuian]

20. Scientists DON"T Know and their theory of 50-100 years

could be quite off... it might be 10 years or 20 years which means the world that you and I know will be quite changed

England will be mostly Gone
many islands GONE under water...
like JAPAN

China will lose much also
Bejing Shanghai Hong Kong

Bangladesh Sri Lanka ...Gone

Australia will be a lot smaller

America will lose much of Florida

Its one thing to lose Artic Ice and greenland Ice

but to lose lots and lots of Antartic Ice

WHOAH

all of this is in Inconvenient Truth

[dysfunctional press]

27. most coastal cities worldwide will be affected.

the u.s. won't just lose most of florida- manhattan, houston, big chunks of san francisco and los angeles, new orleans, boston...and lots more besides that.

[happyslug]

22. Duplicate topic from the 16th

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x87856

[hatrack]

29. Thanks, Happyslug!

Always good to know that someone's hanging out in E&E!

:toast:

[happyslug]

31. As I said in your thread, the next 30 days are what to worry about

It is the end of Summer in the Antarctic, thus its ice is at it minimum. Next Week the days will start to become SHORTER and the temperature will start to DROP. Ice that has melted will refreeze. As most people know, when water freezes it expands. When the newly froze ice expand it might add enough pressure to the ICe Sheets to cause them to break down. That would be the final push (The real cause is the increase heating of the earth, the freeze-Break I am talking about is the icing on the cake, not the Cake itself).

Now come about a month the water would be froze permanently till next year (When it will start to re-melt again). This is the theory of how the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) will break and has broke before (In spring when the amount of ice is at its smallest amount). Come the end of April the danger period would have been past, the WAIS would NOT be melting ice that has been frozen for decades if not centuries (And thus exposing even older ice to the affect of melting), but freezing water that will met net summer (and this pattern of winter expansion of the Ice Sheets and the melting of the Ice Sheet in Summer has been going on since the time the West Antarctic last broke up and melting into the Southern Ocean.

Now I am NOT saying the Ice Sheets and Ice Shefves of the West Antarctic will melt this year, what I am saying if the WAIS should ever break up it will be during the time period when the ice is at its Minimum which is always March through April of every year.

[Amused Musings]

28. I have always

wanted to canoe to work and school.

[Celefin]

32. Antarctic Ice Shelf Giving Way

The reason for the acceleration could well be the melting of the
Antarctic sea ice, e.g. in the Ross Sea.
Without these massive ice sheets there is nothing to
prop up the inland ice.
So if the sea ice is getting thinner, which it is...

Also see the website of the latest Antarctic drilling core expedition
http://www.andrill.org