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Posted on 06/27/2007 2:14:00 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
WELLINGTON, New Zealand - An ice sheet in Antarctica that is the world's largest — with enough water to raise global sea levels by 200 feet — is relatively stable and poses no immediate threat, according to new research.
While studies of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets show they are both at risk from global warming, the East Antarctic ice sheet will "need quite a bit of warming" to be affected, Andrew Mackintosh, a senior lecturer at Victoria University, said Wednesday.
The air over the East Antarctic ice sheet, an ice mass more than 1,875 miles across and up to 2.5 miles thick centered on the South Pole, will remain cold enough to prevent significant melting in the near future, the New Zealand-led research shows.
But it eventually may become vulnerable to the effects of rising sea levels driven by the melting of other ice sheets, Mackintosh's team found. Their research was published this week in the journal Geology.
"The East Antarctic ice sheet is the largest and the coldest and is going to be the last to respond in any great way" to global warming, he said. "Our research suggests changes in sea levels due to global warming will not be caused by changes in the East Antarctic Ice Sheet yet."
The researchers found that from 13,000 to 7,000 years ago, when sea levels rose by more than 330 feet, the East Antarctic ice sheet thinned by 660 feet to 1,150 feet. Rising waters during that period would have lifted the buoyant ice sheet's edges off its rocky base, causing pieces to detach or "calve" and melt.
If the sheet experienced such calving again, even small changes could have a significant impact, the researchers said.
The study — conducted with Australia's Macquarie University and the Australian Nuclear Science & Technology Organization — did not predict how much sea levels would have to rise before the sheet's edges started to break away.
Glaciologist Wendy Lawson, head of geography at Canterbury University who took no part in the study, said the new research supported previous modeling indicating the sheet was stable.
"There is no short-term risk as far as the overall magnitude of the East Antarctic ice sheet goes," she said.
What a relief!
I’ll sleep easier tonight, with this knowledge... ;]
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Great... Just great... Now what am I supposed to do with that beach house in Flagstaff?!?
Oh yeah, I hear ya,, when polar ice sheets move, it’s tough to sleep too good.
Algore is deeply saddened.
Largest Ice Sheet Stable, but Vulnerable, Researchers Say
Wired News - Jun 27
Its vastness protects it from the immediate effects of global warming, but the world's largest ice sheet could be damaged if things get worse.
“The researchers found that from 13,000 to 7,000 years ago, when sea levels rose by more than 330 feet.....”
Well, I’m just glad there are folks like Big Al Gore around THIS time to stop this kind of tom-foolery.
This seems an appropriate thread to cite my recent observations on the retreat of glacial ice.
On a recent trip to Alaska and Canada I had the opportunity to observe several glaciers. Many had roads that allowed one to get close to the toe to make close observation. There were signs as you came closer.
In the csse of the Exit Glacier near Seward Alaska, the signs began perhaps 2 miles from the present toe location. They faithfully trcked the receding toe location. In the case of the Exit Glacier, a national park, the signs began in 1891. That is to say that the US government has been tracking receding glaciers since the 1890’s or for more than a hundred years.
In no instance were the tracking signs initiation less than the 1930’s. The enviros like to cite the glacial retreat but never let us know we have been doing the tracking for more than a hundred years.
Doubt me ..... go have a look. You’ll be glad you did.
“The researchers found that from 13,000 to 7,000 years ago, when sea levels rose by more than 330 feet”.
What were those people back then burning to cause this? It was caused by man, right? It just had to be. Al said so.
I wonder, Noah’s ark?
FRom PmsNBc
Warming cannot make polar ice melt a drop until it reaches 32 degrees F at the ice fields. The point of scrimmage is only a very narrow latitude. That's all we have to manage, with man-made clouds, chemicals or nucleotides to raise the freezing point, plumbing of colder water from the pole, etc. We should develop a tool belt of ice management technologies but not do a thing until the oceans have risen worldwide a real and sizable amount. To date that just hasn't happened.
Maybe I was sleeping in chemistry in Jr High but I do remember that water expands as its frozen and its volume goes down as it changes into water. (90% of an iceberg sits below sea level, if the iceverg melts, 0 net sum gain in ocean level) Why wont the ocean levels go down if all this ice melts instead of go up 200 feet. Also I know that 1 inch of rain is equals to 10 inches of snow, so if the snow melts, its volume also goes down. Am I making any sense here?
It’ll take one hellacious volume of ice to make the Oceans rise 200 feet.
whenever researchers declare something is true, that’s when I worry about the opposite being true. I’ve never worried about Global Warming, but maybe now I should.
The Antarctic ice sheets are sitting on land, not floating.
Because these ice fields sit on land, not water.
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