Peaks The Size Of European Alps Found Embedded In Antarctic Ice Sheet - Reuters

[hatrack]

OSLO (Reuters) - Jagged mountains the size of the Alps have been found entombed in Antarctica's ice, giving new clues about the vast ice sheet that will raise world sea levels if even a fraction of it melts, scientists said on Tuesday. Using radar and gravity sensors, the experts made the first detailed maps of the Gamburtsev subglacial mountains, originally detected by Russian scientists 50 years ago at the heart of the East Antarctic ice sheet.

"The surprising thing was that not only is this mountain range the size of the Alps, but it looks quite similar to the (European) Alps, with high peaks and valleys," said Fausto Ferraccioli, a geophysicist at the British Antarctic Survey who took part in the research. He told Reuters that the mountains would probably have been ground down almost flat if the ice sheet had formed slowly. But the presence of jagged peaks might mean the ice formed quickly, burying a landscape under up to 4 km (2.5 miles) of ice.

Ferraccioli said the maps were "the first page of a new book" of understanding how ice sheets behave, which in turn could help predict how the ice will react to global warming.

Antarctica, bigger than the United States, has been swathed in ice for about 35 million years, and contains enough of it to raise world sea levels by about 57 meters (187 feet) if it ever all melted. So even a fractional melt would affect coasts around the globe.

EDIT

http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSTRE51N3B720090224?feedType=RSS&feedName=environmentNews

[arcadian]

1. How high is the ice shelf?

Because the base of these peaks would have to be below sea level if there are peaks as high as the alps.

[hatrack]

3. Literally miles thick

It's just immense.

[YOY]

2. If they find Elder Things and or Shoggoths I'm gonna shit myself

n/t

[hatrack]

7. Cthulhu fhtagn!

[YOY]

10. Damn those Mountains of Madness!!!

n/t

[Wickerman]

4. Wow, if it froze suddenly, imagine what they might find in them there hills

if, of course, anyone is around to explore them once the caps melt.

[Viva_La_Revolution]

6. Lost world frozen 14m years ago found in Antarctica

A lost world has been found in Antarctica, preserved just the way it was when it was frozen in time some 14 million years ago.


The fossils of plants and animals high in the mountains is an extremely rare find in the continent, one that also gives a glimpse of a what could be there in a century or two as the planet warms.

A team working in an ice-free region has discovered the trove of ancient life in what must have been the last traces of tundra on the interior of the southernmost continent before temperatures began to drop relentlessly.

An abrupt and dramatic climate cooling of 8°C in 200,000 years forced the extinction of tundra plants and insects and brought interior Antarctica into a perpetual deep-freeze from which it has never emerged, though may do again as a result of climate change.

lots more... http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/science/sciencenews/3348721/Lost-world-frozen-14m-years-ago-found-in-Antarctica.html

I love this stuff! :)

[Wickerman]

8. That is amazing! Thanks

I wonder if they can find any written documents that prove McCain was mayor? :rofl:

[FedUpWithIt All]

9. Some say that Atlantis is under that ice.

It was discussed on DU

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=245x61845

[guardian]

11. How did that happen?

"An abrupt and dramatic climate cooling of 8°C in 200,000 years..."

What caused the cooling? Did all the Neanderthals start driving hybrids?

[Viva_La_Revolution]

12. I found some info.. reason is not known

http://news.bio-medicine.org/biology-news-3/A-thesis-of-the-UGR-analyses-more-than-20-million-year-old-vegetation-to-study-climatic-evolution-1716-1/

Scientists know that Antarctica used to be much warmer -- fossil leaves from ancient plants have been found to exist up until around 40 million years ago, and pollen has been dated to as early as 20 million years ago.

But how the continent came to be so cold is something of a mystery.

Around 14 million years ago, scientists are fairly certain the climate resembled modern-day Alaska. Within a million years a deep freeze had settled in, and the ice sheets grew to mammoth proportions, where they mostly remain today.
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/07/23/antarctica-fossil-print.html

continental drift may have been part of it too, Antarctica used to be in more southern latitude.

[guardian]

13. Thanks for the links

In my previous reply I was focusing on the comment that there was "An abrupt and dramatic climate cooling of 8°C in 200,000 years..." I wouldn't think continental drift would make that much difference in just 200K years.

A bigger question for me is, "Why can't all these climate scientists explain past climate change--yet they supposedly can predict the future?"

Even in Barrett808's magical "college text book" (http://geosci.uchicago.edu/~rtp1/ClimateBook/ClimateVol1.pdf page 58) they can't model the the Little Ice Age. But their models supposedly can accurately predict future changes of even smaller magnitudes with absolute certainty. How can you exclude natural processes when you can't even identify the natural processes?

[Viva_La_Revolution]

15. Possible Explanations for the Past 60 Million Years of Cooling

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/ice/chill.html

science is ever evolving. :)

[OKIsItJustMe]

5. NSF Press Releasae

http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=114172&org=NSF&from=news

Press Release 09-029

U.S.-led, International Research Team Confirms Alps-like Mountain Range Exists under East Antarctic Ice Sheet

A capstone of NSF-supported International Polar Year deployments, project may help determine what caused ice sheet to form

February 24, 2009

View an http://nsfgov.http.internapcdn.net/nsfgov_vitalstream_com/agap_2.swf">animation showing how the Gamburtsevs may have caused the East Antarctic Ice Sheet to grow.

Flying twin-engine light aircraft the equivalent of several trips around the globe and establishing a network of seismic instruments across an area the size of Texas, a U.S.-led, international team of scientists has not only verified the existence of a mountain range that is suspected to have caused the massive East Antarctic Ice Sheet to form, but also has created a detailed picture of the rugged landscape buried under more than four kilometers (2.5 miles) of ice.

"Working cooperatively in some of the harshest conditions imaginable, all the while working in temperatures that averaged -30 degrees Celsius, our seven-nation team has produced detailed images of last unexplored mountain range on Earth," said Michael Studinger, of Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, the co-leader of the U.S. portion of the Antarctica's Gamburstev Province (AGAP) project. "As our two survey aircraft flew over the flat white ice sheet, the instrumentation revealed a remarkably rugged terrain with deeply etched valleys and very steep mountain peaks."

The National Science Foundation (NSF), in its role as manager of the U.S. Antarctic Program, provided much of the complex logistical support that made the discoveries possible. NSF also supported U.S. researchers from Columbia University, Washington University in St. Louis, Pennsylvania State University, the Center for Remote Sensing of Ice Sheets (CReSIS) at the University of Kansas, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and the Incorporated Research Institutions in Seismology (IRIS).

The initial AGAP findings--which are based on both the aerogeophysical surveys and on data from a network of seismic sensors deployed as part of the project--while extremely exciting, also raise additional questions about the role of the Gamburtsevs in birthing the East Antarctic Ice Sheet, which extends over more than 10 million square kilometers atop the bedrock of Antarctica, said geophysicist Fausto Ferraccioli, of the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), who led the U.K. science team.

…

[phantom power]

14. huge... tracts of land