Posted on 08/17/2010 6:29:56 AM PDT by lbryce
While Arctic sea ice has been diminishing in recent decades, the Antarctic sea ice extent has been increasing slightly. Researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology provide an explanation for the seeming paradox of increasing Antarctic sea ice in a warming climate.
The paper appears in the Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science the week of August 16, 2010.
"We wanted to understand this apparent paradox so that we can better understand what might happen to the Antarctic sea ice in the coming century with increased greenhouse warming," said Jiping Liu, a research scientist in Georgia Tech's School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences.
Currently, as the atmosphere warms, the hydrological cycle accelerates and there is more precipitation in the Southern Ocean surrounding Antarctica. This increased precipitation, mostly in the form of snow, stabilizes the upper ocean and insulates it from the ocean heat below. This insulating effect reduces the amount of melting occurring below the sea ice. In addition, snow has a tendency to reflect atmospheric heat away from the sea ice, which reduces melting from above.
However, the climate models predict greenhouse gases will continue to increase in the 21st century, which will result in the sea ice melting at a faster rate from both above and below. Here's how it works. Increased warming of the atmosphere is expected to heat the upper ocean, which will increase the melting of the sea ice from below. In addition, increased warming will also result in a reduced level of snowfall, but more rain. Because rain doesn't reflect heat back the way snow does, this will enhance the melting of the Antarctic sea ice from above.
(Excerpt) Read more at sciencedaily.com ...
Unless it warms up but you just never know.
Nobody, however, would be left alive to report it. Kinda takes the thrill out of it.
Great line.
Well..... that's because you are going by actual sat photos, and not by computer models.
In the VIRTUAL WORLD of ATMOSPHERIC modeling, the world is getting hotter, the icecaps are melting, and all the nerds (scientists) have girlfriends that look like this-
Absolutely silly.
Everyone knows that the continents are just floating 'plates' that bobble around on the ocean surface. These tectonic plates would just rise as the water melted. I often wondered why we didn't just take a bunch of tugboats to Hawaii and tow it a little closer to the U.S. Sure would make vacationing a little cheaper.
Yes. Specifically the parts just adjacent to Air conditioning/heat pumps.
It was 90 degrees here, yesterday.
Today it is 70.
If I put that into the ‘models’, it shows that it will be -200 degrees by the end of the month.
I wonder what we would discover if the world’s sea levels suddenly dropped 400 ft to reveal that evidence of civilization which has been covered over...
Then it would stay warm until it doesn’t........
Ice in my cup takes up MORE space than the water it melts into.
So - if all the ice on the poles melted, wouldn’t that mean that the water level should drop?
It’s a valid a theory as “Man Made/Caused Global Warming/Climate Change”
/sarc tag needed?
*I don’t see the arctic diminishing
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/en/home/seaice_extent.htm*
I agree. It probably isn’t.
The AGW promoters love to talk about the Arctic, but ignore the large gains in the Antarctic.
I usually don’t argue with them about the Arctic too much because anything that happens there is a small fraction of what is going on down South.
If it’s “global” it seems like you have to include the other part of the globe. The AGW believer don’t see it that way.
If we had bacon, we could have bacon and eggs - if we had eggs...
Can’t be said too often...falls under education of the masses...
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