Antarctic glacier 'melted JUST as fast LONG before human carbon emissions'

theregister.co.uk ^ | 21st February 2014 | Lewis Page,

[BenLurkin]

Top boffins from the British Antarctic Survey say that the Pine Island Glacier - famous as a possible major cause of global-warming-powered sea level rises - was melting just as fast thousands of years ago as it is melting today.

“This paper [just published] is part of a wide range of international scientific efforts to understand the behaviour of this important glacier," explains Professor Mike Bentley, one of the leaders of a BAS effort to find out what's going on with the PIG.

"The results are clear in showing a remarkably abrupt thinning of the glacier 8000 years ago," adds the professor.

The Pine Island Glacier has been much studied over the last two decades, as the rate of ice melting into the sea there has accelerated during those years. Many scientists have theorised that this might be due to global warming caused by human burning of fossil fuels. It's been suggested that the PIG on its own might cause sea levels to rise by several centimetres this century (for background the seas rose about 17cm in the last century. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change expects this to increase massively this century, though there's plenty of research to suggest otherwise.) In any case it appears more and more likely that the rapid melting of the PIG's sea ice shelf from the early 1990s to 2010 would have happened anyway, regardless of humanity's carbon emissions. Hearteningly perhaps, the Antarctic sea ice area continues to increase overall, global warming or no.

The new BAS research is published in premier boffinry mag Science. ®

[SgtHooper]

Right outta Detroit. Proper usage is, “Is everybody in?” response, “Yes, we are boff in”

[minnesota_bound]

Some caveman lit a match....

[Nifster]

upped his croon foot print ;)