Goddard/NASA Report - All Oceans Warming, Powering Rapid Ice Loss - AFP

[hatrack]

According to a NASA scientist, the pieces to a years-old scientific puzzle have come together to confirm warmer water temperatures are creeping into the Earth's colder areas. Those warm waters are increasing melting and accelerating ice flow in polar areas.
This conclusion appears in an article by Robert Bindschadler, a glaciologist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. His article is in the March 24 issue of Science magazine.

Temperatures collected from ships and buoys showed a warming of all oceans. That increase began before satellite sensors detected temperature increases of sea surfaces. Most of the warming was limited to the oceans' upper 1000 meters (.62 mile), except in the North Atlantic. In the cold North Atlantic waters, heat penetrated even deeper. This warming has increased the melting of sea ice in the North Atlantic. Overall ocean heat content changes are monitored by ocean altimetry missions like TOPEX and Jason-1 and the on site Argo buoy network floats that broadcast measurements to a satellite. These provide information on ocean temperatures.

It has another effect, however, which may potentially be of great significance to sea level rise, and that is that these warm waters are beginning to melt the underside of the floating fringes of the Greenland ice sheet, even at great depths, It is these fringes that have been holding back vast stores of ice locked up in the Greenland ice sheet, and as this ice has been melting, the glaciers have hastened their flow to the sea.

A recent assessment in the changes in speed and the amount of snow and ice around Greenland confirms a large melting of outflow glaciers and acceleration of ice flow. Three large glaciers, the Kangerdlugssuaq, Helheim and Jakobshavns Isbrae have been melting at a rapid rate over the past several years.

EDIT

http://www.spacemart.com/reports/NASA_Scientist_Claims_Warmer_Ocean_Waters_Reducing_Ice_Worldwide.html

[Dead_Parrot]

1. Not good. nt

[Kool Kitty]

2. One of the final stories on the news tonight

(WABC out of NYC) had a story about a huge chunk of ice that has broken off the Antarctic Ice Sheet in the past couple of days, a piece the size of Martha's Vineyard. It broke off in the Weddell (sp?) Sea area. *Sigh*

[Dogmudgeon]

3. So, the North Atlantic will soon have NO thermohaline activity

Looks like there will be just about no winter for the next few years -- followed by 300 to 90,000 years of the best skiing weather imaginable.

--p!
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