Environment & Energy
Related: About this forumAntarctic melting faster "than at any other time over the last 1,000 years."
Summer ice is melting at a faster rate in the Antarctic Peninsular than at any time in the last 1,000 years, new research has shown.
The evidence comes from a 364-metre ice core containing a record of freezing and melting over the previous millennium.
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Lead researcher Dr Nerilie Abram, from the Australian National University and British Antarctic Survey (BAS), said: "We found that the coolest conditions on the Antarctic Peninsula and the lowest amount of summer melt occurred around 600 years ago. At that time temperatures were around 1.6°C lower than those recorded in the late 20th century and the amount of annual snowfall that melted and refroze was about 0.5%.
"Today, we see almost 10 times as much (5%) of the annual snowfall melting each year. Summer melting at the ice core site today is now at a level that is higher than at any other time over the last 1,000 years. And whilst temperatures at this site increased gradually in phases over many hundreds of years, most of the intensification of melting has happened since the mid-20th century."
Levels of ice melt on the Antarctic Peninsular were especially sensitive to rising temperature during the last century, he said. "What that means is that the Antarctic Peninsular has warmed to a level where even small increases in temperature can now lead to a big increase in summer melt," Dr Abram added.
http://www.independent.ie/world-news/antarctic-ice-melt-quickening-29195397.html
Dragonbreathp9d
(2,542 posts)Gregorian
(23,867 posts)50 million new humans since the day we passed the 7 billion mark.
So are we going to debate whether it's moral to demand that people be responsible, or are we going to watch the planet dissolve while we conduct studies.
I live on the edge of a state forest. A once heavily logged redwood forest. The USGS has many stations in the creeks where they are studying fish. Meanwhile a rather large logging operation is just about to begin. It strikes me the same way. People (ie, population) want lumber. So loggers dust off their chainsaws. And it doesn't take a USGS scientist to know that logging is going to disrupt salmon spawning areas. Log away.
George Carlin was right. The planet is fine. It's the people who are fucked.
kestrel91316
(51,666 posts)My niece and nephew will live to see MAJOR Antarctic melting (they are in their late 20s).
FirstLight
(13,360 posts)ALL the models since 2000 have been wrong in their projected timeline... by 50+ years in some cases.
It's all about contingency plans, trying to do the right thing by our selves and our communities...growing gardens, adapting energy needs, etc., but truly just bracing for the worst, since it's coming no matter what. The PTB have NO intention of changing our course...we are helpless to shift the tides...
OKIsItJustMe
(19,938 posts)Issue date: 14 Apr 2013
Number: 03/2013
[font size=3]A new 1000-year Antarctic Peninsula climate reconstruction shows that summer ice melting has intensified almost ten-fold, and mostly since the mid 20th Century. Summer ice melt affects the stability of Antarctic ice shelves and glaciers.
The research, published this week in the journal Nature Geoscience, adds new knowledge to the international effort that is required to understand the causes of environmental change in Antarctica and to make more accurate projections about the direct and indirect contribution of Antarcticas ice shelves and glaciers to global sea level rise.
In 2008 a UK-French science team drilled a 364-metre long ice core from James Ross Island, near the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula, to measure past temperatures in the area. They discovered that this ice core could also give a unique and unexpected insight into ice melt in the region.
Visible layers in the ice core indicated periods when summer snow on the ice cap thawed and then refroze. By measuring the thickness of these melt layers the scientists were able to examine how the history of melting compared with changes in temperature at the ice core site over the last 1000-years.
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OKIsItJustMe
(19,938 posts)[font size=5]Recent Antarctic climate, glacier changes at the upper bound of normal[/font]
By Vince Stricherz
News and Information
[font size=3]In the last few decades, glaciers at the edge of the icy continent of Antarctica have been thinning, and research has shown the rate of thinning has accelerated and contributed significantly to sea level rise.
New ice core research suggests that, while the changes are dramatic, they cannot be attributed with confidence to human-caused global warming, said Eric Steig, a University of Washington professor of Earth and space sciences.
Previous work by Steig has shown that rapid thinning of Antarctic glaciers was accompanied by rapid warming and changes in atmospheric circulation near the coast. His research with Qinghua Ding, a UW research associate, showed that the majority of Antarctic warming came during the 1990s in response to El Niño conditions in the tropical Pacific Ocean.
Their new research suggests the 90s were not greatly different from some other decades such as the 1830s and 1940s that also showed marked temperature spikes.
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