Posted on 03/06/2011 9:19:47 AM PST by smokingfrog
*** Ice sheet structure far different than thought — complicating rising-sea scenarios ***
Knowing how the massive ice sheets atop Antarctica and Greenland work is key to predicting how global warming could raise sea levels and flood coastal cities. But a new study upends what scientists thought they knew. It turns out it’s not just ancient snow that makes up the ice sheets, but water deep under the sheets also thaws and refreezes over time.
To put it in non-scientific terms, lead scientist Robin Bell told msnbc.com, the study redefines "how squishy" the base of ice sheets can be. "This matters to how fast ice will flow and how fast ice sheets will change."
"It also means that ice sheet models are not correct," she said, comparing it to "trying to figure out how a car will drive but forgetting to add the tires. The performance will be very different if you are driving on the rims."
Reporting in this week's issue of the peer-reviewed journal Science, Bell and his team described how ice-penetrating radar peeled back two miles of ice a million years old in the center of Antarctica.
The images show that refrozen ice makes up 24 percent of an area known as Dome A, a 13,800-foot-high plateau roughly the size of California. Much of the sheet and refrozen ice lies atop an underground mountain range.
Ice from that area "drains into all the major ice shelves of Antarctica," the researchers wrote in their study. "Processes occurring in the Dome A region have the potential to affect the majority of East Antarctica."
While the field work was far inland, Bell believes the same will hold true along the edges of the icy continent. (cont.)
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
Heh!
Marketing.
While it was much more habitable / farmable then, it would have still been tough country during the Medieval Warm Period.
LOL
good one!
Yet, some find it profitable.
Despite the fallacy of it all, I myself have considered getting in on the gravy train.
See how changing just one element can destroy the
experiment.
I did the same one only using Scotch instead of water,
and when the Ice was melted, there wasn’t anything left.
I love science, although in the interests of accuracy
I may have to try it again, just to be sure.
Cuz when Lief Erikson was living there it was green. Orchards, vinyards, sheep farms, exporting produce to European customers. The old settlements are now under ice.
May I suggest that we continue to voice our concerns and inquiry’s at the world economic forum in Davos Switzerland?
Haven’t these turd faces ever heard of tides.
Prey tell, Sir, with all due respect,(and as a Veteran you have my utmost respect - thank you for your service), why would you see fit to pollute such a magical elixir as Scotch Whiskey with even a few molecules of dihydrogenmonoxide?.
I’m not worried, but for a different reason: the actual empirical basis for a claim of global warming is the fact of arctic warming. The extrapolation to the whole planet is flat silly (and can only be done by corrupting data) because the antarctic has been getting colder.
Nothing in the anthropogenic theory can account for the antarctic getting colder (they paper it over by using a weather station at the extreme north of the Antarctic Peninsula as a proxy for the whole continent, when it is the interior that has been getting colder). On the other hand, Svensmark’s solar magentism/cloud formation theory explains both the mild warming trend of the 1990’s, the Antarctic cooling, and the end of the warming trend that Terenberth lamented the AGW folks’ inability to explain was a “travesty”. The real travesty is the anthropogenic theory.
Ahhhhhh. Very interesting. So it’s safe to say that, at one time, Greenland was much warmer than it is today. Hmmmmm....another question.....how many SUVs were around back in Leif Erickson’s days?
The vice of an article like this is accepting the false premise of “global warming”, or whatever Al Whore is calling it these days.
Well, the longboats had both sail and oars, and they were utility boats...
“It’s stunning that this guy was able to perpetrate such a hoax.”
Look for the hand of Mikhail Gorbachev and his various foundations in the USA.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.