Rain speeds Antarctic Peninsula glacier melt

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://uk.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUKTRE50F35D20090116?sp=true

Rain speeds Antarctic Peninsula glacier melt

Fri Jan 16, 2009 2:53pm GMT

By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent

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.

The ice cracks and growls as the 70-meter-high (230 feet) ice cliffs at the front of the Sheldon glacier slide downhill, some of the ice a bluish white. Icebergs sometimes split off into the sea, where penguins and seals swim.

…

[rurallib]

1. Rain in Antarctica? Good grief

[OKIsItJustMe]

3. Well, it's Summer in Antarctica

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=rain-speeds-antarctic-pen

…

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.

…

Average temperatures on the peninsula have risen by up to 3 Celsius (5.4 F) in the past 50 years against a world average of 0.7 Celsius in the past century.

[Bluzmann57]

2. And it's minus 20 here

Something's wrong. Something's dreadfully wrong.