ANCIENT ICE MELTING TOO FAST

Ancient Ice 2013  photograph by Marilyn Morningstar - all rights reserved

ANCIENT ICE - Is it melting too fast for comfort?

photographs 2013 by Marilyn Morningstar

Recently I read a Harvard report on 1450 years of Arctic sea ice. There has apparently been a sustained COOLING of sea ice over the past 1250 years followed by an abrupt and pronounced WARMING in the 20th century. Forced WARMING seems to have been caused by excess greenhouse gases. I guess it doesn't take a brain surgeon to realize that if you KEEP ON pouring poison into the waters, earth and sky for years upon years without a break, something is going to go awry. A human body cannot sustain a continuous stream of poison either, which is why so many OLDER people finally break down into disease.

 The compilation of a continuous flow of greenhouse gases surely must be considered a serious threat to the environment  It certainly stands as a logical and plausible cause of the record atmospheric and oceanic WARMING of recent decades which may soon lead to an ice-free Arctic Ocean in summer! Do we really want to wait around and SEE if Antarctica is going to go the way of the Arctic? Or shall we stop, look and listen to the proof of ice melt in the Arctic and do something before it is too late to do anything in Antarctica?

NBC
Denise ChowLive Science

An international team of researchers journeyed to the southernmost continent to study the Pine Island Glacier, which is the longest and fastest-changing glacier on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. This region, in the far reaches of Antarctica, has been of particular interest to scientists because it is among the most rapidly melting ice masses in the world, thinning as it flows to the Amundsen Sea at a rate of about 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) each year.

Since warm seawater flows beneath the ice shelf (the part of the glacier that floats on the ocean), scientists have known that the Pine Island Glacier was melting from below. Now, using sensors deployed across the 31-mile-long (50-km-long) glacier, the researchers have gauged the rate of glacial melt beneath the solid ice. [Album: Stunning Photos of Antarctic Ice]

The results demonstrate the crucial need to better understand melting processes underneath massive glaciers, including how this undersea process will affect global sea-level rise in the future.

"Intensive melting under the Pine Island ice shelf, as observed in our study, could potentially lead to the speed-up and ultimate break-up of the ice shelf," David Holland, a professor of mathematics at the Center for Atmosphere Ocean Science at New York University, said in a statement. MORE

NBC Kerry Sanders - Antarctica Ice - Climate Change

Breaking News on the Climategate Scandal!

If the Antarctica ice sheet melted the worlds oceans would raise by 60-65%! What if only 10% melted? The experts and the researchers, along with the on board biologists on my vessel seemed mighty worried. I think we need a private investigator to uncover the folks behind the anti-global warming schemes and conspiracy theories. I am an EYEWITNESS. I realize it is always in flux, melting, freezing, melting, freezing. That is the normal pattern. What should not be happening is what IS happening - it's melting too fast! I happen to believe the experts who spend most of their year in Antarctica. While no one can any longer deny the rapidity of melt in the arctic, the nay sayers are still on their rampage about global warming being nothing but a hoax to steal more money from tax payers. Okay, can we just stick to the facts and decide if taking some sensible preventative measures might be in order, JUST IN CASE?

Do you think National Geographic has PROFIT in mind when they report this information to the public?

Do you think Exxon Mobil has PROFIT in mind when they report this information to the public?~

United Nations LEAK
EXPOSED TO THE PUBLIC

Ice Melting Faster in Greenland & Antarctica 

September 6, 2013
~

Ice in Antarctica and Greenland is disappearing FASTER and may drive sea levels higher than predicted this century according to LEAKED United Nations documents!

Greenland’s ice added six times more to sea levels in the decade through 2011 than in the previous 10 years, according to a draft of the UN’s most comprehensive study on climate change. Antarctica had a five-fold increase, and the UN is raising its forecast for how much the two ice sheets will add to Earth’s oceans by 2100.

The changes in the planet’s coldest areas are a “very good indicator” of a warming planet, according to Walt Meier, a research scientist with the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

“It’s an early warning system,” Meier said by phone fromNASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “When you think about a couple of degrees of warming, in the U.K. or U.S., it’s not something that would be too noticeable, whereas in an area of snow and ice, it can have a huge effect. With sea ice, minus 1 to plus 1 is the difference between skating on the ice and swimming in the ocean.”

‘Climategate’ Scandal

A draft of the study was obtained by Bloomberg from a person with official access to the documents who declined to be further identified because it hasn't been published. The data on melting ice is included in chapters covering rising sea levels and the planet’s cryosphere regions, the frigid realms of glaciers, permafrost, snow-covered ground and ice sheets.

In its last report the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, was faulted by skeptics of man’s influence in warming the planet for exaggerating how fast Himalayan glaciers were melting and using reports by environmental advocacy groups.

A number of IPCC scientists also were accused of doctoring numbers and hiding data after a trove of emails was leaked in the so-called Climategate scandal. Three subsequent probes largely exonerated the researchers while saying they could be more transparent.

A summary of the latest 2,200-page report designed to guide lawmakers worldwide as they work to devise climate policies is due for publication on Sept. 27 in Stockholm after a four-day meeting where the wording will be finalized. Jonathan Lynn, a spokesman for the panel, declined to comment.

Sea Levels

Greenland and Antarctica contain enough ice to raise global sea levels by almost 66 meters (217 feet), a process that would take thousands of years.

Greenland’s contribution to rising sea levels “very likely” rose to an average of 0.59 millimeters a year from 2002 to 2011, from 0.09 millimeters a year in the prior decade, according to the draft. The rate in Antarctica “likely” rose to 0.4 millimeters a year from 0.08 millimeters, it said.

The report defines “very likely” as a probability of greater than 90 percent and “likely” as at least 66 percent.

Greenland may add a total of 4 centimeters to 21 centimeters to ocean levels by the period 2081 through 2100, across a range of carbon-emissions scenarios assessed in the study, compared with the period 1986 through 2005. That’s up from a 2007 forecast of 1 centimeter to 12 centimeters, when the UN carried out its last major assessment of climate science.

Modeling Challenges

Results due to Antarctic ice range from lowering sea levels by 6 centimeters to a 14-centimeter increase. The 2007 report forecast a reduction of 2 centimeters to 14 centimeters, due to higher snowfall than surface melt. The UN said in the earlier report that its understanding of how the southern continent loses ice from glaciers flowing into the sea wasn't good enough to include in its prediction.

The authors of the latest report said there has been “substantial progress in ice-sheet modeling” since 2007. Even so, there remain “significant challenges” in modeling Antarctic glaciers and ice sheets that terminate at the sea, and the forecast for their contribution to sea levels by 2100 was the same across all different emissions scenarios examined, unlike with Greenland.

“We’ve had a major step forward in our ability to understand” ice patterns in Greenland and Antarctica, Martin Siegert, a glaciologist at the University of Bristol in England, said in a phone interview. “There is more certainty around the data.” Siegert wasn’t involved in the IPCC report.

Melt Season

Other findings in the new report include:

- Arctic sea ice extent “very likely” decreased 3.5 percent to 4.1 percent a decade since 1979, when satellite measurements began. Ice cover at the end of the annual melt season “very likely” decreased at a rate of 11.5 percent a decade.

- The extent of Antarctica’s sea ice “very likely” increased 1.2 percent to 1.8 percent a decade over the same period.

- “Almost all glaciers worldwide have continued to shrink” since the 2007 UN assessment. Their contribution to rising sea levels “very likely” averaged 0.62 millimeters a year from 1971 to 2009.

- More than 600 glaciers have reportedly disappeared “but the real number is certainly higher.”

- There’s “very high confidence” that snow cover has decreased in the Northern Hemisphere since the 1920s.

- There’s “high confidence” that permafrost temperatures have increased in “most regions” since the early 1980s.

“It’s clear that the cryosphere is one of the natural indicators of decadal climate change in the planet,” David Vaughan, a researcher at the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge, England, and a coordinating lead author of the UN report’s chapter on ice, said in a phone interview. “The changes are very visible.” Vaughan declined to comment on specific findings of the report.

Courtesy of  Bloomberg news

To contact the reporter on this story: Alex Morales in London at amorales2@bloomberg.net

Ancient Ice Antarctica 2013 photograph by Marilyn Morningstar - all rights reserved