Posted on 03/04/2006 9:14:55 PM PST by quantim
AXcess News) Houston, TX - Satellite surveys show that ice is melting in Antarctica faster than snow fall replenishes it, which is causing the sea to rise.
Two seperate studies showed varying results. But both studies drew the same conclusion, that the ice in Antarctica is melting rapidly. The only difference between the studies was the amount the sea was rising.
The authors work in both studies added weight to the evidence that global warming was affecting sea levels.
Earlier estimates were that global warming was causing an increase in rain fall that would generate more snow fall in Greenland and the Antarctic, replacing the ice that was grumbling into the sea.
"Snowfall will matter less and less," said Robert Bindschadler, an expert on polar ice at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Bindschadler was not involved in either study.
Satellite images show that most of the ice is being lost in western Antarctica, where warming air and seawater have recently broken up huge floating shelves of ice.
A survey led by H. Jay Zwally, a NASA scientist, used satellites and aircraft to measure changes in the height of ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland over the decade ended in 2002.
A second study by scientists at the University of Colorado looked at changes from 2002 to 2005 using a pair of NASA satellites that detect subtle changes in Earth's gravitational field that can be used to estimate the weight of water in an ice sheet.
Zwally's study found a loss of volume in Antarctica and a small overall gain in Greenland, where inland snows have outpaced ice flowing into the sea. Zwally published his findings in the Journal of Glaciology.
Scientists at the University of Colorado found that changes in the ice were a good indicator of the changing climatic conditions there. Their study was published in the Journal of Science.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said the Colorado team's estimate that 35 cubic miles of ice was being lost annually in Antarctica fit well with current ideas about what was causing the rise.
WE ARE ALL DOOMED, I TELL YOU DOOMED!!!!
I'd have to look into this further....but off the top of my head I find it odd to suggest that because ice levels are melting....this would cause sea levels to rise....
It is late and I have a dozen other things on my mind.....so maybe I am looking at this too narrowly at the moment.....but I find the premise odd.
Mineral map of Antarctica showing known significant deposits of various minerals
Ag - Silver
Au - Gold
Co - Cobalt
Cu - copper
Cr - Chromium
Fe - Iron
Mb - Molybdenum
Mn - Manganese
Ni - Nickel
Pb - Lead
Ti - Titanium
U - Uranium
Zn - Zinc
Sounds like a good thing.
funny i would have thought its from all the hot air msm and "scientist" were spewing over past years
In Antarctica, the ice isn't floating on the oceans - it's on land. When it melts, it just adds water to oceans.
Hmmmm...no indication of how high the sea has risen. I'm at ~4600 ft.; hopefully I'll have beachfront property before long....?
In other news, Global Whining is on the increase.
Remember when it got warm because of global warming? Well, when it started getting colder, they came out with the "A common misconception about global warming is that temperatures rise." junk.
In other words, if it gets warmer, it's because of global warming. If it gets colder, well gee, that's global warming too. Covered their butts pretty well there.
Happens a lot. Has to do with the quality of the people going into journalism.
How high does the sea have to rise to flood the Arabian peninsula?
As I said it was getting late and I read it rather quick. I wasn't sure - I thought it was suggesting ice glaciers off of Antarctica.....
What's wrong with the assertion that non-floating ice turns into liquid water, thus adding water to the oceans?
This is obviously Bush's fault for not signing Kyoto.
Its OK, the scientific evidence is that the Antartic Ice is growing THICKER.
http://www.nationalcenter.org/NPA388.html
After a decade of warnings that the Earth's temperature may be rapidly warming, and that this supposed warming may result in a surge of catastrophic flooding and lethal storms, it now appears that we may be in for global cooling instead.
The mammoth west Antarctic ice sheet, which contains enough water to lift the world's sea levels by 20 feet, isn't melting after all. Instead, it's actually thickening and Antarctica itself is getting cooler.1
A new study by researchers from the California Institute of Technology's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the University of California at Santa Cruz, published in the respected journal Science, found that the ice sheets of Antarctica, far from melting, actually are expanding by some 26.8 billion tons of ice a year.2
The scientists, Ian Joughlin, a geologist at CIT, and Slawek Tulaczyk, a professor of earth sciences at UC Santa Cruz, speculate the thickening ice sheets are repeating a pattern that occurred from 1650 -1850 when the Earth went through what became known as the Little Ice Age.3
I just watched a couple of hours of "Animal Planet' on cable TV regarding mammoths. These folks worked awfully hard to remove the frozen skeletons at enormous costs when they could have just waited a year or two. ;-)
Who cares that it was in Siberia, we're doomed.
The North pole is a floating ice berg, we have subs going under the polar cap pretty much on a daily basis. So, what you are saying as it applies to the NORTH pole, is correct (IMHO)
However, the South Pole is the largest continent on our lovely little planet. It is not a floating ice berg; so that water has got to go somewhere.
I'm reading Michael Crichton's book "State of Fear" which is an EXCELLANT piece of fiction. Using typical Crichton style, he puts a lot of scientific sources into his story. His story basically uses actual published and documented FACTS to blow the lid off of the whole "Global Warming" hoax. If you have even a 10% belief in 'Global Warming Theory', I'd suggest picking this book up at Wal-Mart (it's on the top seller's list, for a really great reason).
Big thumbs up for an entertaining, and very educational late night, or airplane ride type of read. It'll make an awesome movie; it would blow 'Jurasic Park' out of the water.
How are the hotels on Miami beach holding up?
"They's gold in them glaciers!"
On a previously mentioned point, doesn't water expand when it freezes?
Maybe my view is simplistic like another poster wrote, but "just damn" it would seem like the water would contract upon thawing.
We know so little about such matters--I mean our scientists,
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