Global Warming Might Create Lopsided Planet

Yahoo ^ | Wed Jun 29,2005 | Robert Roy Britt

[satchmodog9]

Extra precipitation expected as a result of global warming could create a lopsided world in which sea ice increases around the South Pole while the far north melts away.

ADVERTISEMENT

A new study illustrates the difficulty in predicting how the planet might react to overall warming, which most but not all scientists believe is underway, in part due to greenhouse gas emissions by industry and autos.

"Most people have heard of climate change and how rising air temperatures are melting glaciers and sea ice in the Arctic," said Dylan Powell of the University of Maryland Baltimore County. "However, findings from our simulations suggest a counterintuitive phenomenon. Some of the melt in the Arctic may be balanced by increases in sea ice volume in the Antarctic."

Powell, a doctoral student, is lead author of a paper describing the results in this month's Journal of Geophysical Research (Oceans).

Powell and his colleagues used satellite data from NASA's Special Sensor Microwave/Imager to study snow depth on sea ice. The data allowed "more stable and realistic precipitation data" to be fed into computer models that project changes around the globe.

"On any given day, sea ice cover in the oceans of the polar regions is about the size of the United States," said Thorsten Markus, a co-author of the paper and a research scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. "Far-flung locations like the Arctic and Antarctic actually impact our temperature and climate where we live."

Polar sea ice formation and climate patterns drive large ocean circulation currents, which in turn affect local climates at moderate latitudes where most people live. A warmer world should fuel more precipitation, most experts agree.

For Antarctica, the new study concludes, the extra precipitation will mean deeper snow, which will suppress sea ice below, making it thicker over time.

The idea rusn counter to a study earlier this year that found glaciers in part of Antarctica are melting rapidly.

"We used computer-generated simulations to get this research result," Powell cautioned. "I hope that in the future we'll be able to verify this result with real data through a long-term ice thickness measurement campaign."

[TheForceOfOne]

Ugh! Yellow burning ball of fire in sky! Burn! Burn Zog's eyeballs to a crisp! Must make piece with ball of fire! Must enact Kyoto Protocol! Ugh! yes! Good idea!

[JustAnotherOkie]

With all the hot air the libs are belching it's no wonder. Perhaps we could put the libs together on the heavy side to balance it out.

[yobid]

You know if the Earth stops rotating and there's no more gravity, people will be flying all over the place.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

No end to the nonsense is right!

See:

Not by Fire but by Ice
THE NEXT ICE AGE - NOW!

[HEY4QDEMS]

You forgot pimples.

Yeah, but I didn't forget the cure. ;^)

[AFPhys]

LOL


These maroons...

[joshhiggins]

I just inserted a new OUIJI board into my computer and ran this new data and the results are that the south pole ice cap "might" become so thick that the ice cap will topple over into the ocean, and cause a tidal wave that will wipe out San Francisco.

This calls for another drink!

[E.G.C.]

BTT!!!!!!

[nothingnew]

Global Warming Might Create Lopsided Planet

Nah...Marxists running third world countries and the USA along with the UN create a lopsided planet.

FMCDH(BITS)

[leakinInTheBlueSea]

classic... i remember the NASA study that set out to measure ice melt in antartica (spurred by hysteria resulting from satellite images showing a break in the ross ice shelf)... anyway, the study showed *gasp* sea ice was INCREASING as a whole over the continent. glad to see our fine universities are forming hypotheses around measurements, rather than proving hypotheses through fundamentally sound experimentation. hmmmm... by the same logic, i would like to hypothesize that heavily concentrated regions of human activity (cities) likewise create a lobsided earth, and could eventually fracture the earth's crust. show me the money!

[Calvin Locke]

Cry. The left/anarchist/political opportunist/anti-American/jealous of US/anti-freedom
types will use it to try to make our lives as miserable as they can.

[FlingWingFlyer]

Global Warming Might Create Lopsided Planet

Could have read.

Global Warming Might Reveal Motherlode of Gold Under Arctic Ice Cap. Worldwide Wealth Would End "War on Poverty."

[Antonello]

Yeah, that darn pesky data. His precious hockey stick, which he says looks like this:

______/

just didn't look as impressive in its raw form, including data from before the time they decided to start their graph, and before 'rounding' the stats to smooth out the handle of their stick:

_/^--\_--_-/^-\_--_-_/

[KC Burke]

I will agree that it is only written at the pop novel level of literature. But that is what is read by the vast bulk of buyers of most popular fiction.

This guy's books generally get a lot of coverage in the media and promotion by the publishing community. This one hasn't been mentioned.

That should tell us something beyond the fact that he is a pot-boiler author.

[Trillian]

Don't forget the global warming induced herpes out of nowhere.

[OB1kNOb]

Now which way is it to the Global Warming conference?

[Eric in the Ozarks]

Is this the same guy who suggested citrus fruit came from outer space to conquer the earth ?

[Atlas Sneezed]

Now, if ice covering land melts and runs into the ocean it could cause levels to rise, but the ice on antartica just keeps getting thicker.

---

All of this seems to suggest that sea levals may DROP. Time for the dreaded "disruption of our coastal biosystems."

[hadit2here]

Global Warming Will Not Raise Sea Level
Presented at the 1997 Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union

S. Fred Singer, Ph.D.

Global sea level (SL) has undergone a rising trend for at least a century; its cause is believed to be unrelated to climate change [1]. We observe, however, that fluctuations (anomalies) from a linear SL rise show a pronounced anti-correlation with global average temperature--and even more so with tropical average sea surface temperature. We also find a suggestive correlation between negative sea-level rise anomalies and the occurrence of El Nino events. These findings suggest that--under current conditions-- evaporation from the ocean with subsequent deposition on the ice caps, principally in the Antarctic, is more important in determining sea-level changes than the melting of glaciers and thermal expansion of ocean water. It also suggests that any future moderate warming, from whatever cause, will slow down the ongoing sea-level rise, rather than speed it up. Support for this conclusion comes from theoretical studies of precipitation increases [2] and from results of General Circulation Models (GCMs) [3,4]. Further support comes from the (albeit limited) record of annual ice accumulation in polar ice sheets [5].

1. A. Trupin and J. Wahr. Geophys J. Int., 100, 441-453 (1990)
2. D. Bromwich. "Ice sheets and sea level" Nature, 373, 18 (1995)
3. S.L. Thompson, and D. Pollard. Eos 76, No. 46 Suppl.(1995); J. Clim. (1997)
4. H. Ye and J.R. Mather, Int. J. Climatol., 17, 155-162 (1997)
5. D.A. Meese et al., Science 266, 1680-1682 (1994)

http://www.sepp.org/scirsrch/slr-agu.html

I also have read another research finding that mid-glacier ice deposition was found happening on glaciers around Siberian Arctic. Can't find the link right now, but if this young student can extricate his head out from his anal sphincter long enough to do some actual research, he could find it easily. If I can find it, I'll post it.

Lopsided!!?? What a maroon!

[SoIA-79]

Sheesh who lets these people write. Everyone know that if the planet gets all lopsided then it will roll out of it's orbit and spin of into deep space which will pretty much take care of global warming. Either that or we will crash into the sun. Either way all of our problems will go away.