Posted on 02/24/2021 10:24:41 AM PST by Red Badger
Piedmont Glacier in north-east Greenland (Coen Hofstede/Alfred Wegener Institute)
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It should be simple. When temperatures on Earth get hotter, huge amounts of water ice trapped in giant glaciers begin to thaw, releasing water into the oceans, and causing sea levels to rise. It's the story of our lives.
By contrast, when global temperatures plummet, which happens during ice ages, sea levels proceed to drop, as water content retreats from the ocean, freezing once more in huge inland ice sheets.
This epic, ongoing cycle of ice ebb and flow – the transitions from glacials to interglacials – has been occurring since time immemorial. But there's a problem.
For years now, scientists tracking these cycles have suggested there's a "missing ice" problem: a mysterious discrepancy between very low sea levels roughly 20,000 years ago, and the volume of ice stored in glaciers at the same time.
Ice surface elevation, 20,000 years ago. (Evan Gowan/Alfred Wegener Institute)
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At its heart, the problem is this. During the peak of Earth's last ice age – the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), which ended approximately 20,000 years ago – sea level is thought to have been about 130 metres (427 ft) lower than it is today, based on ancient coral sediment evidence.
But modelling suggests ice volume in glaciers at this point in time wasn't great enough to explain such a low sea level. So how can we explain this 'missing' ice?
In a new study led by geophysicist Evan Gowan from the Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany, researchers appear to have found a solution.
With a new reconstruction called PaleoMIST 1.0, the researchers were able to model the evolution of global ice sheets way into the past, much farther back than even the LGM.
"It looks like we've found a new way to reconstruct the past as far back as 80,000 years," Gowan says.
The results of the model suggest the anomaly in our data isn't a case of missing ice, but rather mistaken inferences about how low the sea level actually fell during the LGM.
According to PaleoMIST 1.0's ice physics model, the sea level dropped no more than 116 metres below where the waves lap today, with ice volume (being fully accounted for) clocking in somewhere around 42.2 × 106 km3.
"We, therefore, find no basis for the missing ice problem, as our LGM reconstruction is compatible with existing sea-level constraints," the researchers explain in their study.
According to the team, the misdirection of the missing ice argument stems from a couple of factors – firstly, over-reliance on far-field indicators (coral sediment evidence from locations elsewhere in the world), which may not accurately represent global average sea levels as we once thought they did.
Another issue is a long-established but seemingly flawed method used to estimate glacier masses, oxygen isotope ratio cycles – which appears to produce discrepancies when reconciling sea-level height and glacier masses as far back as the LGM, at least.
"The isotope model has been used widely for years to determine the volume of ice in glaciers up to many millions of years before our time," says one of the team, geophysicist Paolo Stocchi from the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research.
"Our work now raises doubts about the reliability of this method."
While the missing ice mystery appears to be solved, the researchers don't expect theirs will be the last word on this topic.
After all, their own solution's incompatibility with oxygen isotope ratio cycle-based reconstructions has, in a way, "created a new missing ice problem", the team admits.
Whether and how that new uncertainty can be resolved is a challenge for another day, in future research that may yield even clearer glimpses of ice sheet evolution in the distant past.
The findings are reported in Nature Communications.
That proverbial & metaphorical "tip of the iceberg" represents the exact difference is the weight of frozen water (ice) versus liquid water.
When the ice melts, it actually increases liquid volume.
Without that ice cube leaving a space where it came from.
Yes, that is true, but we can only extrapolate the salinity from the volume estimates of ancient data. That’s what the whole thread is about.
So they guessed wrong? How often does that happen?
Besides, how did all this happen without SUVs?
mistaken inferences
(bad assumptions)
and science is replete with them
Another WP grad had this paper published recently concerning the matter:
http://maajournal.com/Issues/2019/Vol19-1/7_Jaye%2019(1).pdf
Didn’t know it was missing. It’s on my front lawn, several feet high.
“Oh, that must be why when the ice melts in my drink, the glass gets fuller! Except that it doesn’t. SCIENCE!! Of course, I’m granting them that the ice is actually melting, which is a rather large concession.”
You need to take into account land ice as part of the glacier. Take your same drink. Fill it to the top. Now add the ice cube. I believe that’s the displacement, however from all the crap the climate alarmists have been spouting for years, they probably are not even aware this is what they are talking about.
and just think for the moneys to randomly create the entire works of Shakespeare , they would have to create the entire works of Shakespeare with just one error for every letter, space, or number . Or just two errors, or just 3 error, etc.
You are going to need several billion monkeys and billions of years.
And during the process they will be completing every other work of lessor number of letters, spaces, or numbers
Its not missing “ice”, its missing “water”.
And here’s where it went.
Genesis 1:6-8 ESV (English Standard Version)
And God said, “Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.” And God made the expanse and separated the waters that were under the expanse from the waters that were above the expanse. And it was so. And God called the expanse Heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, the second day.
Didn’t Al Gore say that parts of New York city would be under water by 2016? How are New Yorkers able to survive in such a water world?
... but the carbon cycle is definitely moving us to a warmer planet — that data & the theory that it supports is rock solid. (/sarc)
Usually the screw-up in a situation like this is a mistake made by the person taking inventory.
For the LORD God had not caused it to rain on the earth, and there was no man to till the ground; but a mist went up from the earth and watered the whole face of the ground.”
releasing water into the oceans, and causing sea levels to rise.
No need to continue...when your base assumption is wrong the rest is bs.
My drink does not overflow when the ice melts.
The science is butt ugly
Nice
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