Miles of snow free land in Antarctica

I came across this vid which shows air footage of hundreds of square miles of warm ice free land down south, along with warm water lakes , who would have thought? taken from some footage from Byrd...which proves they were down there twelve years before as a husky was born there.Which makes it 1935 ish. www.youtube.com...

a reply to: anonentity

which proves they were down there twelve years before as a husky was born there.Which makes it 1935 ish.

What? Byrd was there twice in that decade; 1928-1930 and 1939-1940. Not sure what huskies puppies have to do with it.

And yes, there are dry valleys in Antarctica. But they aren't really "warm." www.coolantarctica.com...


Not sure what your point is. At all.

a reply to: Phage
Has anyone actually been at the exact spot the pole is on foot? I'd imagine the terrain is extremely treacherous.

a reply to: Brotherman

If you have the money there are holiday trips up there and they look fantastic.

a reply to: Brotherman

Most of the terrain next to the pole is treacherous.

The Earth's magnetic poles move.

The magnetic North pole moves in loops of up to 50 miles per day. In the last 150 years, the pole has wandered a total of about 685 miles and the South pole moves in a similar fashion.

a reply to: Brotherman

Yes it is treacherous terrain with deep hidden crevasses and the geographic south pole (90 south) has had more visitors than the top of Mt Everest. It wasn't actually reached until 1911 by a scandinavian team using dog sleds. The extreme cold of the pole itself is partly due to the high altitude, getting as cold as -90C at times. There are temporary snow-free areas in the summer months at lower altitudes.

As I understood a lot of Antarctica is a desert and doesn't get any snow. Clear land by the mile wouldn't be strange at all if that's the case.

a reply to: mikell

Don't know about desert, more like frozen tundra and permafrost.

Well this says 5.5 Million square miles of desert from Live Science.

Desert


From the article A Desert is defined as a region that has less than 254 mm (10 in) of annual rainfall or precipitation. Antarctica can be classified as a desert by this definition. In the interior of the continent the average annual precipitation (in *equivalent of water) is only about 50 mm (about 2 in), less than the Sahara.  Along the coast, this increases, but is still only about 200 mm (8 in) equivalent of water. Heavy snowfalls occur when cyclonic storms pick up moisture from the surrounding seas and then deposit this moisture as snow along the coasts.
Unlike other deserts, there is little evaporation from Antarctica, so the relatively little snow that does fall, doesn't go away again. Instead it builds up over hundreds and thousands of years into enormously thick ice sheets.
*this precipitation doesn't fall as water of course, but as snow, the "water equivalent" is the amount of water you would get if the snowfall were collected and melted.

a reply to: andy06shake


That's Green Bay Wisconsin in the spring. Not a pleasant place either

a reply to: mikell

Well lets just say i would not wish to spend a night out in the open down there when it gets cold.

Because the environment would not be the only thing frozen solid the next day.

Remarkably beautiful landscape all the same and a window on to our ancient past.

Good Lord. The commentator says he home-schools his kids. I really feel sorry for their education if he's the teacher. A man who is "bothered" by a map that is a rectangle shape "as if the world is flat" and misses off Antarctica.

This video is a good example why people should never be home-schooled.

Anyway. No one never said that Antarctica was all snow and ice. It is not. Id does have parts uncovered by snow and ice. As to military bases, I am sure these would be known as academia would give the game away. Besides, what's the point of militarising Antarctica?

a reply to: anonentity

The Dry Valley's are a well known and documented area of the planet, these antartic valleys are devoid of ice and snow except for some encroaching glaciers partially because the little snow that fall's there is then blown away by wind that sweep's over them, very cold indeed and not warm though I know of NO modern study's of the warm lake's Bird's and apparently the NAZI expedition's may have found, there are however frozen lakes in the dry valley's, liquid and brackish but deep below a cap of solid ice which is also swept free of snow by the katabatic wind's.

The dry valley's are classed as the closest we can get to actually standing on mars, very little life above the microbial survives that and the wind has often carved the rock's into very strange formation's.
www.universetoday.com...
www.amusingplanet.com...
karmak.org...
www.nature.com...


youtu.be...

Hey cool thanks for the info, that is interesting.

originally posted by: anonentity
I came across this vid which shows air footage of hundreds of square miles of warm ice free land down south, along with warm water lakes

The video says the lake temperature was measured at 38 degrees F, that's warm? That's the temperature inside my refrigerator! Obviously it's not so warm at McMurdo:


Who'd have thunk sub-zero temperatures make cold storage easier?

originally posted by: paraphi
This video is a good example why people should never be home-schooled.

Where else are you going to learn that 38 degrees F is warm?

I could have lived without the bible quotes and some lame commentary but otherwise there is some interesting old footage in that video. I had never seen those mountains of coal before, if the video narrator was right about the composition of the mountains.

originally posted by: Arbitrageur

I could have lived without the bible quotes and some lame commentary but otherwise there is some interesting old footage in that video. I had never seen those mountains of coal before, if the video narrator was right about the composition of the mountains.

I agree. I liked seeing all the footage and think it's interesting how many military bases are there, but his video didn't seem to have a clear purpose. It became muddied up with some random conspiracy-related stuff that just seemed like he threw it in there simply because he was making a video, and then a bunch of Jesus and Bible gobbledygook which had no relation to anything about antarctica.

As for homeschooling and the map, it's important to learn the world is round and not a flat rectangle, and also important to learn about Antarctica, but what worries me is the amount of bible-crap he threw into the video for no apparent reason, how much education are his children actually receiving that doesn't have a bible verse thrown into it? I feel bad for those kids.

a reply to: Phage


In the vid it shows warm water lakes , also it states that their is a mountain of coal. So how if the continent is in darkness for six months of the year, how can plants photosynthesize, and make a massive amount of coal . This is surface coal. Which is unusual. If they have been down there for getting on a hundred years. Then the infra structure must be pretty sophisticated by now, and Google map shows massive amounts of dwellings and container ports. Heaps of jobs are being advertised, so it looks to me that mining and industry seems to be very active down there. A place twice the size of the United States seems to be getting a lot of attention and not much publicity.

I just thought some of that old footage is some of the best, but not that much modern footage, why the quiet?

originally posted by: LABTECH767
a reply to: anonentity

there are however frozen lakes in the dry valley's, liquid and brackish but deep below a cap of solid ice which is also swept free of snow by the katabatic wind's.

Thanks, was trying to remember that name 'katabatic'. It's the extremely cold dense air getting chilled on the highlands in the interior flowing like a river down to sea level that scours the landscape making it a miserable place for life as we know it. Much of the continent is over 3000m above sea level due to millenia of accumulated snow & ice.

Talking about the antarctic, here is an interesting informative video.

www.youtube.com...

a reply to: anonentity

So how if the continent is in darkness for six months of the year, how can plants photosynthesize, and make a massive amount of coal .

Plate tectonics, continental drift. That continent was not always where it is now.

Heaps of jobs are being advertised, so it looks to me that mining and industry seems to be very active down there.

While there may be research as to mineral deposits, there is no commercial mining activities as far as I know, it's prohibited by The Madrid Protocol.

A place twice the size of the United States seems to be getting a lot of attention and not much publicity.

Plenty of info out there.
It's not going to get a lot of publicity, not like it's hosting the Olympics anytime soon.