Antarctica Is Covered With Flowing Water, And That Worries Scientists

Weather.com ^ | 4/21/17 | Andrea Thompson

[Impala64ssa]

Since the days of the great early 20th century polar explorers, scientists have noticed the unbelievably bright blue ponds and streams of meltwater that can form on the glaciers and ice shelves of Antarctica and were even crucial to the recent collapse of one ice shelf.

While most research into Antarctic ice melt has concentrated on the impacts of warming ocean waters that are eating away at the ice from below, a new continent-wide survey shows that these surface meltwater drainage systems are much more prevalent around the continent than was previously thought.

The systems, described in two new studies published Wednesday in the journal Nature, vary from a collection of ponds to a roaring seasonal river that dumps meltwater into the ocean via a 400-foot-wide waterfall. The ubiquity and variety of these meltwater systems may means they are more important to the future stability of Antarctica’s ice shelves than scientists had realized, the researchers behind the survey say.

“It shows that we’re just starting to understand” the complexities of such systems and that we need “more sophisticated views of the plumbing on our planet,” study co-author Robin Bell, a polar researcher at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, said. Continent-Wide View

Antarctica’s coasts are fringed with hundreds of floating platforms of ice called ice shelves, which buttress the massive glaciers behind them. When those ice shelves are destabilized or crumble, the glaciers behind them flow faster, ferrying more land-bound ice to the ocean and raising global sea levels.

The continent’s vast ice sheets contain enough ice to raise global sea levels by nearly 200 feet were it all to melt, though even partial melt could cause vulnerable coastal areas that are home to millions to be gradually claimed by the sea.

Most of the work to understand the melt of Antarctica’s ice shelves and glaciers has concentrated on the effects of warm ocean waters lapping away at them from below, not the surface meltwater produced by warming air temperatures.

Ponds and streams of meltwater had been documented on Antarctica as far back as the famed expeditions led by Ernest Shackleton and Robert Falcon Scott in 1909 and 1912, respectively. Though meltwater is thought to have been a major contributing factor in the collapse of the Larsen B ice shelf in 2002, most research into such surface melt features were concentrated in Greenland, where they seemed to be more important to understanding warming-driven melt.

No comprehensive view of Antarctica’s surface melt features existed. Bell and Jonathan Kingslake, also at Lamont-Doherty, along with several colleagues, pored over satellite images dating back to 1973 and aerial photos going back to 1947 to do just that.

“Quickly we started to realize that they’re much more widespread than people thought,” Kingslake said.

They found nearly 700 drainage systems that formed during the summer melt season, some of which were found farther inland and at higher altitudes than the researchers expected. These systems had been around for decades and while some were stationary ponds, others were made up of streams that transported water as far as 75 miles and fed melt ponds, the largest of which, on the Amery Ice Shelf, reached 50 miles long.

“It’s huge,” Kingslake said. “And it’s been [forming] since 1973 and we didn’t really know about it.” Ice Shelf Stability

Most of the melt ponds and streams form near rock outcrops or bluish ice exposed by the sharp winds that scour snow from the surface; these features are darker than the surrounding ice and so absorb more solar energy.

In one paper, the team took a closer look at the system they found on the Nansen Ice Shelf, which was first observed during the Shackleton and Scott expeditions. The Scott team noted that the “noise of running water from a lot of streams sounded odd after the usual Antarctic silence,” and fell into several of the ponds and streams.

The new research shows that during warm years with considerable melt, a river system forms that eventually ends in a 400-foot-wide waterfall that can siphon off an entire year’s worth of surface melt in just a week.

The different types of meltwater drainage systems could raise different possibilities for ice sheet stability. A constellation of melt ponds helped to destabilize the Larsen B ice shelf by absorbing more solar energy and seeping into crevasses in the ice and causing it to further fracture. But an efficient river system like that found on Nansen could actually protect the ice shelf, Bell and her colleagues posit. By quickly exporting meltwater from the ice sheet, the river could prevent that energy absorption and infiltration of cracks.

But the meltwater streams could also help transport meltwater to more vulnerable parts of the ice.

“We have these two different scenarios and we don’t know which one is more likely,” Kingslake said, though that will likely vary from ice shelf to ice shelf. “So we really can’t tell what the future holds for any one particular ice shelf.”

[Impala64ssa]

Well gang, looks like we got another naturally occurring phenomenon for Algore and the environazis to exploit. I wonder if Leo DiCrapio will take his Diesel belching yacht to the Antarctic ice shelf while he chills out on the deck sipping mai tais surrounded by blonde bimbos in skimpy bikinis, all in the name of saving the planet?

[Roman_War_Criminal]

These Corporate Marxists will claim that we should all fear and cower over the melt off of the Rockies during the springtime.

[DoughtyOne]

My bet is it’s a group of Global Warming scientists, they’re scared, and it’s yellow water.

[SgtHooper]

Yeh, it worries these liberal arts jacka$$es because it might impact their bogus grants for studying the Albanian ice rat.

[ClearCase_guy]

Just starting to understand
Don’t know
Can’t tell
Complex systems

So, obviously we need to panic and de-industrialize, because, you know, it’s our fault.

[PIF]

Yes melting ice in the spring and summer in the Antarctic is absolutely tragic - when it all melts sea levels will rise a whopping 40 feet and everyone on Earth will either drown or have to leave for a dryer planet ...

[Darksheare]

Glaciers tend to have moving water under them, especially at the contact points with bedrock.
Amazing they looked at the mechanics of the last ice age, how the ice behaved over rock, and then promptly forget said mechanics upon declaring everything to be “global warming”

[cssGA30005]

sky is falling... sky is falling.. run .. run away

[butlerweave]

Well if ice kept building at the Antarctica it would make the Earth so heavy down there it would fall out of space ,D’oh

[dowcaet]

Speaking of Algore, didn’t he predict the Arctic would be ice free by 2013? These globalist warming leftists are nothing but evironmental hucksters promising solutions to problems they have no idea of how to fix nor have any intention to fix anyways while conning dumb rich liberals to fork over money that ends up in their bank accounts. Isn’t that right Algore?

[TigersEye]

When those ice shelves are destabilized or crumble, the glaciers behind them flow faster, ferrying more land-bound ice to the ocean and raising global sea levels.

#FakeScience! Sea level is rising but at an historically slow pace for this interglacial period.

Claim That Sea Level Is Rising Is a Total Fraud

Sea levels began to rise 18k years ago at the end of the last glacial period. They have risen about 135 meters since then which is an average of 7.5 millimeters per year. That is an average of 750 mm per century (29.5 inches) which is far more than the average over the last century.

From 1880 to 2000 sea level rose about 20 cm or just under 8 inches. Far less than the nearly 30 inches per century average over the last 18,000 years.

[I want the USA back]

Climate changes. The overwhelming bulk of the changes are due to the sun and its cycles. Some of the rest is caused by man. The changes are in both directions, so get over it.

[Wuli]

The viscosity of ice changes under intense pressure. The depth of continental ice in both the arctic and antarctic areas is massive. At the bottom the pressure is so great ice change to a liquid, without changing its temperature. As it moves, by gravity, it combines just as water on open land does, from tiny streams, to creeks, to rivers. It also is part of the mechanism of how the continental ice moves, by gravity, ever so slowly at the edges to the sea - sliding on the “liquid ice” underneath as the depth grows in the interior.

[Impala64ssa]

Well if ice kept building at the Antarctica it would make the Earth so heavy down there it would fall out of space ,D’oh
Heck, maybe Rep HankJohnson was on to something(besides being ON something) when he remarked that too many troops on Guam would cause it to capsize, the same thing would happen with too much ice buildup but on a more catastrophic scale. Seriously, Admiral Robert F. Willard should've been given the Congressional Medal of Honor for maintaining his composure and keeping a straight face during that farce of a hearing

[TigersEye]

Just starting to understand
Don’t know
Can’t tell
Complex systems

Those are the kind of phrases you hear when "the science is settled." /s lol

Antarctic Ice Sheet Mass Balance (yep, it's growing)

[Eccl 10:2]

The water will collect on one side and Antarctica will tip over.

[Red Badger]

There are ancient Roman era ports under water now that were above water 2000 years ago. The world did not notice as they slowly sank beneath the waves over a few centuries. They didn’t cry and wail and run about screaming that the world was about to end. They just moved...............

[Yo-Yo]

Newsflash: Water stays just as frozen at -10°F as it does at -20°F, so warming air temperatures in the Antarctic does not contribute to ice melting.

However, geothermal activity does.

[Red Badger]

No, it would just tip over...................

[Del Rapier]

Yep,the end of the world....too much water.