Climate: New study slashes estimate of icecap loss
Posted on 09/08/2010 4:10:36 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
Climate: New study slashes estimate of icecap loss
PARIS (AFP) - – Estimates of the rate of ice loss from Greenland and West Antarctica, one of the most worrying questions in the global warming debate, should be halved, according to Dutch and US scientists.
In the last two years, several teams have estimated Greenland is shedding roughly 230 gigatonnes of ice, or 230 billion tonnes, per year and West Antarctica around 132 gigatonnes annually.
Together, that would account for more than half of the annual three-millimetre (0.2 inch) yearly rise in sea levels, a pace that compares dramatically with 1.8mm (0.07 inches) annually in the early 1960s.
But, according to the new study, published in the September issue of the journal Nature Geoscience, the ice estimates fail to correct for a phenomenon known as glacial isostatic adjustment.
This is the term for the rebounding of Earth's crust following the last Ice Age.
Glaciers that were kilometers (miles) thick smothered Antarctica and most of the northern hemisphere for tens of thousands of years, compressing the elastic crust beneath it with their titanic weight.
When the glaciers started to retreat around 20,000 years ago, the crust started to rebound, and is still doing so.
This movement, though, is not just a single vertical motion, lead researcher Bert Vermeersen of Delft Technical University, in the Netherlands, said in phone interview with AFP.
"A good analogy is that it's like a mattress after someone has been sleeping on it all night," he said.
The weight of the sleeper creates a hollow as the material compress downwards and outwards. When the person gets up, the mattress starts to recover. This movement, seen in close-up, is both upwards and downwards and also sideways, too, as the decompressed material expands outwards and pulls on adjacent stuffing.
(Excerpt) Read more at sg.news.yahoo.com ...
Maybe we have reached a tipping point in the willingness of some Media to let some facts out.
Further reductions to follow. Stay tuned. Science at it’s best.
The socialist neglected to report that the largest glacier in Europe, vatnajokull was also the sight of the sixth largest volcano in a string of volcanoes which include eyjafjallajokull, the {recently}erupting European volcano. Vatnajokull has been used as the poster child for Al Gore’s global warming film, floating polar bears, and elementary school classroom lectures since the inception of the hoax. Neglected in press reports highlighting pooling water, cleaving ice falling into the sea, and retreating glacial ice is that the volcano beneath the ice is active and had last erupted in 1996-97. The natural UNDRGROUND temperatures were the source of the warming, not outside man made sources.(and Gore and his ilk knew this) Great One, it may be worth noting that thermal energy was pioneered in Iceland and Greenland due to there ABUNDENCE of THERMAL(hot)steam under the area’s and therefore, it was no accident that the NEOCOM/Socialist picked Iceland to begin their assault on Human Industrial/Technological advances.
what? the climate-changing fanatics were wrong?! next you’re going to say that 2+2=4!
Facts are stubborn things. :’)
Perhaps. They know when it serves no purpose to beat a dead horse.
Thanks, Earnest.
Going back a week or two, when we speak of the Northern polar ice cap, we are dealing with a different set of variables than the southern Polar Region.
The North Pole is ground Zero. There is not much elevation, but highest latitudes. From here, glacier activity grows to Highest elevations at lowest latitude possible.
We are probably past the last peak global warming period for this inter glacial ice age. Why?
We have herds of deer in Alaska that are biologically changing. The Bucks are taking on female characteristics and their male parts are disappearing inside of themselves.
This is a defense measure and a cold measure. The bucks travel in the group of six does. The lead doe is out in front and the buck and others follow in line. Wolf Packs protection is my thought.
Also, as biology has it, cold testicles reduces production of sperm. Now, the testicles have moved inside the body for more warmth.
Just how freaking cold is it going to get?
Paul
Somebody tell Hansen...to forget the thermometer ..just check Nature....
We need a headline article with something like ...IceAge coming... Bucks vital parts are shrinking...
Hansen doesn’t deal with science anymore. He was bought by the dark side.
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