Antarctica Melting FASTER!

Well here are some other changes from the South.


Massive iceberg mesmerises Macquarie Islanders

6 November 2009

Macquarie Island expeditioners were treated to a rare sight this week with a huge iceberg floating past the island.

The iceberg is about 8 kilometres off the north-west of the island and is estimated to be about 50 metres high and 500 metres long.

Australian Antarctic Division Glaciologist, Neal Young, said it's uncommon for icebergs to be so far north.

"The iceberg is likely to be part of one of the big ones that calved from the Ross Ice Shelf nearly a decade ago," Dr Young said.

"Throughout the year several icebergs have been drifting slowly northwards with the ocean current towards Macquarie Island," he said.

"We know there are also a few more icebergs 100-200 kilometres to the west of the island."

Iceberg near Macquarie Island
Iceberg near Macquarie Island
Photo: Murray Potter

Iceberg off Macquarie Island
Iceberg off Macquarie Island
Photo: Tessa Bickford

Fur seal biologist, Dr Dean Miller, was the first to spot the iceberg on the way to the colony at North Head.

"I've never seen anything like it; we looked out to the horizon and just saw this huge floating island of ice," Dr Miller said.

"It was a monumental moment for me as it was the first iceberg I have seen," he said.

It is likely the iceberg will break up and melt rapidly as it heads further north.


Followed by:



More icebergs surround Macquarie Island

13 November 2009

One of the icebergs around Macquarie Island
One of the icebergs at Macquarie Island
Photo: Susan Ferguson
A large mass of icebergs is drifting north from Antarctica, past the sub-Antarctic Macquarie Island.

In the past 24 hours at least four icebergs have been spotted off the east and west coasts of the island, ranging in size from 50 metres up to an estimated two kilometres in length.

This follows a recent sighting of a 500 metre long iceberg late last week.

Australian Antarctic Division glaciologist, Neal Young, said it looks like there are at least 50 icebergs in the region around the island.

"From satellite images we can see there is a whole group of icebergs, roughly spread over an area of 1,000 kilometres by 700 kilometres, moving with the ocean current away from Antarctica," Dr Young said.

"The larger icebergs seen from Macquarie Island are tabular in shape, which indicates they have calved relatively recently, probably from one of the massive icebergs which originally calved from the Ross Ice Shelf nearly 9 years ago,"

More here:
www.aad.gov.au...


And more here:

For a long time, it seemed that Antarctica was immune to global warming. Most of the icy southern continent, where temperatures can plummet to minus 80 degrees Celsius (-112 degrees Fahrenheit), seemed to be holding steady or even cooling as the rest of the planet warmed. But a new analysis of satellite and weather station data has shown that Antarctica has warmed at a rate of about 0.12 degrees Celsius (0.22 degrees F) per decade since 1957, for a total average temperature rise of 0.5 degrees Celsius (1 degree F).

This image, based on the analysis of weather station and satellite data, shows the continent-wide warming trend from 1957 through 2006. Dark red over West Antarctica reflects that the region warmed most per decade. Most of the rest of the continent is orange, indicating a smaller warming trend, or white, where no change was observed. The underlying land surface color is based on the Landsat Image Mosaic of Antarctica (LIMA) data set, while the topography is from a Radarsat-based digital elevation model. Sea ice extent in the Southern Ocean surrounding the continent is based on data from the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer for EOS (AMSR-E) collected on May 14, 2008 (late fall in the Southern Hemisphere).


earthobservatory.nasa.gov...

It is summer in the southern hemisphere at present.

Ice will melt when it gets warmer but then it freezes again come winter.

During winter the ice sheets of Antartica are bigger than they have been for a long time. Also, icebergs do have a tendency to break off as might be shown from the sinking of the Titanic, of which one 'theory' of its loss was due to iceberg strike.

Do not be part of the fear mongering agenda!

Smile politely and walk on.....and don't whatever you do part with any money 'to make the world a cooler place'!

It is summer in the southern hemisphere at present.

Ice will melt when it gets warmer but then it freezes again come winter.

During winter the ice sheets of Antartica are bigger than they have been for a long time. Also, icebergs do have a tendency to break off as might be shown from the sinking of the Titanic, of which one 'theory' of its loss was due to iceberg strike.

Do not be part of the fear mongering agenda!

Smile politely and walk on.....and don't whatever you do part with any money 'to make the world a cooler place'!

Originally posted by masqua


To me, there are two questions that require answers first:

*Is there a discernable rise in sea level?
*Is there a distinct rise in mean temperatures worldwide?

What will be the results of continued elevations to the conditions mentioned above?

I think these questions have been answered.
But the debate has evolved into one where one side believes it is anthropogenic and the other side disagrees.

There is just as many Economic repercussion of climate change whether they be natural or anthropogenic in cause. These in turn will be political and socially disruptive. So to will any efforts now considered in the effort to remedy what we believe is Man Made effects.
Either way, change is coming.

Originally posted by Elliot
During winter the ice sheets of Antartica are bigger than they have been for a long time.

A perfect example of an unsubstantiated statement.

Please, could you provide any proof that this is exactly the case, not in the short term (re: the recent La Nina event), but in the long term?

There is no doubt about the shrinking Arctic ice cap, for instance.

reply to post by prof-rabbit


I remember that.
Here is a thread about that.
www.abovetopsecret.com...

Thanks.

reply to post by atlasastro


I agree we need to change the way science keeps getting desolved into politics and coporate cash making machines.

For me true recycling is a process of make, buy, use, reuse, recycle.. except I know the coporate world has worked this so the reuse part of the process is dropped and we have become a single use society.

Projects I have managed include dealing with the EOL (end of life) of products that now only single use.. I have seen repair and refurbishment centres close down becuase of this single use approach.. the coporate world, under the enviromental banner claim these products and destroy them..

You have products that are only a year old and could be reused for a few more years destroyed at the beshest of the corporate world.. While the end process in itself in the electrical and electronics industires require reclaiming heavy metals via varying smelting technquies, due to the different additives/flame retardents used in the plastics the best science/coporate world can do at the moment is to use the plastics as a heat source in the smelting process.. hence you have virtually no return on the products, and virutally nothing to recycle.

To factor the true cost of the process to the enviroment, you need to factor in the amount of products that are created to compensate for this single use approach and the shortened product lifecycle.

It is a con and it is forcing people to buy more frequently by simply limiting the amount of refurbished products out in the market place, and in my opinion some of the enviromental solutions are more damaging to the enviroment.

What I am trying to say is that changes on the ground don't marry into the legislation or have any scientific founding.. in fact sometimes I feel if many is a cause they will make the warming worse.



[edit on 23/11/09 by thoughtsfull]

Originally posted by atlasastro
the debate has evolved into one where one side believes it is anthropogenic and the other side disagrees.

True.

The questions surrounding rising sea levels and global mean temperatures are still debated, though, and it would be helpful if the answers to those two questions were put to rest prior to discussion on the effects human activity may have held in that regard.

We should first establish the veracity of the claims and then look at the data in relation to the Industrial Revolution and world population numbers as an overlay of the established effects.

Originally posted by atlasastro
It is interesting that you mention the discussion of the Facts etc.
As Tim Flannery seems to feel the Facts are clearly there and that they represent real AGW and Climate Change.
www.abc.net.au...
You can find the 14 minute interview here. There is also another segment dedicated to the Hadley hack.

I watched the video and found it interesting. Flannery discusses the recent cooling trend as well.

Considering his prominence in the upcoming Copenhagen Conference next month, it might be well worth viewing the short vid no matter which side of the debate one currently stands on.

Originally posted by masqua

Originally posted by atlasastro
the debate has evolved into one where one side believes it is anthropogenic and the other side disagrees.

True.

The questions surrounding rising sea levels and global mean temperatures are still debated, though, and it would be helpful if the answers to those two questions were put to rest prior to discussion on the effects human activity may have held in that regard.

We should first establish the veracity of the claims and then look at the data in relation to the Industrial Revolution and world population numbers as an overlay of the established effects.

I agree with your stance, as someone who has worked trying to design and implement enviromental solutions in the coroporate world, it would be good to have real scientific concensous of what actions cause what effect and what we need to do to reverse the trend so we can implement real solutions.

All I feel at the moment is that this disagreement on the cause/effect gives the corportate world the space to build the models that suit them, with the best possible revenue returns which will be hard to undo if it is found that they are doing more harm than good.

It is people like me, who in the real world have to design and implement solutions who are left blowing in the wind...

Originally posted by thoughtsfull

Originally posted by Conclusion
reply to post by thoughtsfull

 

I definatly think some people will end up with some nice beach front property.. I'm hoping it's a little over 16ft so I can park the boat at the end of the garden

tho some of the rich snobs in this part of the world won't be happy with all that existing waterfront property being underwater

Look at you, assuming the wealthy won't use the law to just steal your land.

A good article from just a few months ago:

wattsupwiththat.com...

Article from: The Australian

ICE is expanding in much of Antarctica, contrary to the widespread public belief that global warming is melting the continental ice cap.

The results of ice-core drilling and sea ice monitoring indicate there is no large-scale melting of ice over most of Antarctica, although experts are concerned at ice losses on the continent’s western coast.

Antarctica has 90 per cent of the Earth’s ice and 80 per cent of its fresh water. Extensive melting of Antarctic ice sheets would be required to raise sea levels substantially, and ice is melting in parts of west Antarctica. The destabilisation of the Wilkins ice shelf generated international headlines this month.

However, the picture is very different in east Antarctica, which includes the territory claimed by Australia.

East Antarctica is four times the size of west Antarctica and parts of it are cooling. The Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research report prepared for last week’s meeting of Antarctic Treaty nations in Washington noted the South Pole had shown “significant cooling in recent decades”.

So, by focusing on ice loss in the western antarctic, they just "forget" to mention ice thickening in the Eastern antarctic, which is much bigger.

Cherry picking details again?

reply to post by whattheh


Now why do you have to bring logical discussion to such an important topic? Don't you understand that your logical discussion destroys the most important aspect of the 'global warming' theory? The FEAR behind it!

Nice work.

Originally posted by jane_within

Originally posted by thoughtsfull

Originally posted by Conclusion
reply to post by thoughtsfull

 

I definatly think some people will end up with some nice beach front property.. I'm hoping it's a little over 16ft so I can park the boat at the end of the garden

tho some of the rich snobs in this part of the world won't be happy with all that existing waterfront property being underwater

Look at you, assuming the wealthy won't use the law to just steal your land.

*smacks head* your right there...

thanks for the reminder, I nearly forgot my place

Originally posted by Elliot
It is summer in the southern hemisphere at present.

Ice will melt when it gets warmer but then it freezes again come winter.

Jeopardy, lol.

Why do we get so many of these threads, and people do not think, and think the northern and southern hems, are the same, lol.

I wonder if you polled people, would they know the antartica was south and the artic was north? I wonder if they did a poll, would people know. Plus how many people know its spring in the south at the mo, not autumn, like we know.

It might sound silly, but what percentage of people know this, lol. This is how they con people into accepting rubbish like gore the cash man, wants.

These threads get so many confusing sides to it, and the people keep swinging between left and right here in gw threads all the time.

There is no such think as man made global warming fact. Global climate is just natural cycle.

[edit on 11/23/2009 by andy1033]

Originally posted by Britguy
So, by focusing on ice loss in the western antarctic, they just "forget" to mention ice thickening in the Eastern antarctic, which is much bigger.

Cherry picking details again?

Depends on how recent the data is (and this news article is based on this study, I think):

Letter

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Nature Geoscience
Published online: 22 November 2009 | doi:10.1038/ngeo694


Accelerated Antarctic ice loss from satellite gravity measurements
J. L. Chen1, C. R. Wilson1,2, D. Blankenship3 & B. D. Tapley1


Abstract
Accurate quantification of Antarctic ice-sheet mass balance and its contribution to global sea-level rise remains challenging, because in situ measurements over both space and time are sparse. Satellite remote-sensing data of ice elevations and ice motion show significant ice loss in the range of -31 to -196 Gt yr-1 in West Antarctica in recent years1, 2, 3, 4, whereas East Antarctica seems to remain in balance or slightly gain mass1, 2, 4, with estimated rates of mass change in the range of -4 to 22 Gt yr-1. The Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment5 (GRACE) offers the opportunity of quantifying polar ice-sheet mass balance from a different perspective6, 7. Here we use an extended record of GRACE data spanning the period April 2002 to January 2009 to quantify the rates of Antarctic ice loss. In agreement with an independent earlier assessment4, we estimate a total loss of 19077 Gt yr-1, with 13226 Gt yr-1 coming from West Antarctica. However, in contrast with previous GRACE estimates, our data suggest that East Antarctica is losing mass, mostly in coastal regions, at a rate of -5752 Gt yr-1, apparently caused by increased ice loss since the year 2006.

But the point here is that even if we go old skool - East Antarctica is gaining mass, but the data shows that the West region is losing mass even faster. Overall, Antarctica is losing ice mass. And it now even appears to be losing mass in both regions.


[edit on 23-11-2009 by melatonin]

When it all melts the displaced people will need someplace to live. All those penguins can't be wrong.

Originally posted by masqua

Originally posted by Elliot
During winter the ice sheets of Antartica are bigger than they have been for a long time.

A perfect example of an unsubstantiated statement.

Please, could you provide any proof that this is exactly the case, not in the short term (re: the recent La Nina event), but in the long term?

There is no doubt about the shrinking Arctic ice cap, for instance.

i agree that one should post links at the very least but i understand why people don't bother

SATELLITES SHOW OVERALL INCREASES IN ANTARCTIC SEA ICE COVER

West Antarctic ice sheet is thickening

of course, this issue has been posted in regular intervals since before i joined the forum, it just keeps returning. a couple examples:

www.abovetopsecret.com...

www.abovetopsecret.com...

www.abovetopsecret.com...


i know i know, it's probably cherry picking, etc, but i have to ask you what you want? ice will accumulate and therefore has to be removed from the spot it originally arrived at, because it can't pile up indefinitely, can it? two miles is plenty i think, so if it's not allowed to melt, it has to first flow and then break off into the sea. You are unhappy with either way, so your expectations are both unrealistic and you don't understand what you wish for.... substantiated enough for now?

One thing is for certain, though, there is no mention at all in the official party line wrt GW that these things were happening as late as 2002 at least, which constitutes deception by omission, obviously.


PS &edit: before i forget it: things are heating up again, my links are again dying: www.timesonline.co.uk...

the archive said it's blocked out via robots.txt. too bad relevant quotes have been extracted already, isn't it?

[edit on 2009.11.23 by Long Lance]

Scam! Scam! Scam!

Don't believe anything any of these so called "Scientists" say.

The SUN drives the weather on Earth, always has always will. AGW is a total HOAX designed to turn everyone upside down and empty their pockets.

Can we put this thread in the HOAX category??

16 Feet!

Well that pretty much puts the entire state of Florida underwater.

I saw a PBS doc that showed supercooled water actually melts ice in the poles too.

Originally posted by atlasastro

Antarctica Melting FASTER!

Scientists worry that rising global temperatures could trigger a rapid disintegration of West Antarctica, which holds enough frozen water to push up the global ocean watermark by about five metres (16 feet).

(visit the link for the full news article)


[edit on 23-11-2009 by Realtruth]