Rain speeds Antarctic Peninsula glacier melt

[Ichingcarpenter]

Source: Reuters

SHELDON GLACIER, Antarctica (Reuters) - More rain on the Antarctic Peninsula is speeding a melt of glaciers such as the Sheldon, which has retreated 2 km (1.2 miles) in 20 years and is nudging up world sea levels, a leading expert said.

"Rain is very corrosive to glaciers and at least in part the reason this glacier is retreating," David Vaughan, a British Antarctic Survey glaciologist, said on an inflatable speedboat in a bay that had been blanketed by ice for thousands of years.

"The glacier has retreated since 1989 and left this open water. That's the same pattern for 87 percent of 400 glaciers along the Antarctic Peninsula," he told Reuters.

Vaughan said rain was becoming more frequent in summertime on the peninsula, the northernmost part of Antarctica that sticks up toward South America. The peninsula is warming faster than anywhere else in the southern hemisphere.

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSTRE50F35D20090116?rpc=64

[DavidDvorkin]

1. It's Al Gore's fault

If he hadn't invented Global Warming, none of this would have happened.