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The Ross Ice Shelf is Freezing, Not Melting. Which Is Weird.
www.popularmechanics.com ^ | Feb 23, 2018 1.7k | By Sophie Weiner

Posted on 02/25/2018 11:37:47 AM PST by Red Badger

Scientists were surprised by the results of their study.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

In November, scientists from New Zealand used a hot water drill to go deep into Antarctica's Ross Ice Shelf. The shelf, which can be up to 10,000 feet thick, is the largest of several that hold back West Antarctica's massive amounts of ice. If these were to collapse, global sea level would rise by ten feet.

Drilling a hole and lowering a camera and thermometer inside is a way for researchers to understand the history of the shelf, and what is happening to it now. In measuring the temperature and currents below the shelf, they expected to find that the ice was melting.

Instead, the water appeared to be crystalizing and freezing. In the video from National Geographic below, you can see the white dots of ice crystals as the camera is lowered towards the dark sea below. If the shelf was melting, the hole at that level would have smooth sides.

“It blew our minds,” Christina Hulbe, the glaciologist from the University of Otago in New Zealand, who co-led the project, told National Geographic.

Scientists have left instruments deep in the hole to measure currents and temperatures below the shelf for the next few years. Though the freezing seems to be a promising sign for the shelf's stability, it doesn't tell the whole picture. Scientists also hope to learn whether the ice shelf has melted in the past due to other climate shifts.

Though results of this study were unexpected, that doesn't change the larger trend of accelerated warming and icecap melting. In fact, NASA just confirmed we are losing ice in Antarctica at a faster rate every year. The reasons for these odd Ross results probably won't become clear until much more research is done. But for now, at the very least, it's a decent sign that catastrophic melting of the Ross Ice Shelf won't occur in the near future.

Source: National Geographic


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Culture/Society; Foreign Affairs; Government
KEYWORDS: antarctica; catastrophism; climatechange; eltaninimpact; globalcooling; globalwarming; globalwarminghoax; rossiceshelf
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To: Red Badger

If these were to collapse, global sea level would rise by ten feet.
——-

I wonder what the assumptions are for that. It’s awefully cold at 10000 feet, so is this another of those ridiculous statements of what would happen if something that can’t happen caused something else to happen did so.


21 posted on 02/25/2018 12:05:51 PM PST by lepton ("It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into"--Jonathan Swift)
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To: Red Badger

Climate is what you expect. Weather is what you get.


22 posted on 02/25/2018 12:07:04 PM PST by Ken H (Best election ever!)
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To: Shady

The thermometers down there are capable of temperature readings between 100º and RFC.


23 posted on 02/25/2018 12:10:49 PM PST by Ken H (Best election ever!)
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To: Larry Lucido

23 amazing pictures of the Ross Ice Shelf. You won’t believe number 16!


24 posted on 02/25/2018 12:11:45 PM PST by Two Kids' Dad (((( Sessions couldn't find his own ass if Al Franken was grabbing it at the time ))))
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To: Ken H

Lazarus Long..............AKA, Robert Heinlein...............


25 posted on 02/25/2018 12:11:56 PM PST by Red Badger (The people who call Trump a tyrant are the same people who want the president to confiscate weapons.)
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To: ClearCase_guy
"Though results of this study were unexpected, that doesn't change the larger trend of accelerated warming and icecap melting."

Similarly, after finding that ships don't fall off the edge of the Earth, and that one can reach land masses to the West by sailing East: Though results of this study were unexpected, that doesn't change the larger trend that the Earth is flat.

26 posted on 02/25/2018 12:15:10 PM PST by neverevergiveup
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To: Red Badger

Not only weird - scary for those who depend on it to be melting so they can continue their scam....


27 posted on 02/25/2018 12:18:07 PM PST by trebb (I stopped picking on the mentally ill hypocrites who pose as conservatives...mostly ;-})
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To: Two Kids' Dad

You won’t believe what the Ross Ice Shelf looks like now!


28 posted on 02/25/2018 12:19:20 PM PST by ez ("Abashed the devil stood and felt how awful goodness is." - Milton)
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To: Red Badger

sounds like journalists need mandatory science classes.


29 posted on 02/25/2018 12:20:40 PM PST by ully2
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To: Shady
It’s Antarctica. It’s at the bottom of the world. The Sun never shines there for 3 months of the year.

Well then why wouldn't the same phenomenon happen in the north?

30 posted on 02/25/2018 12:31:48 PM PST by Concentrate (ex-texan was right and Always Right was wrong, which is why we lost the election. Podesta the molest)
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To: ClearCase_guy

Though results of this study were unexpected, that doesn’t change the larger trend of accelerated warming and icecap melting.
Of course.

Conclusion, first.
Evidence, later.
And ignore any evidence which proves inconvenient.

They are EVIDENCE DENIERS!


31 posted on 02/25/2018 12:39:27 PM PST by samtheman (Sessions is a criminal for refusing to perform the duties of his office.)
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To: Leaning Right
The researchers should lower Al Gore into the hole and let him check things out personally

That would melt it for sure.

32 posted on 02/25/2018 12:55:21 PM PST by sphinx
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To: PGR88

“Why? These ice shelfs are already in the ocean, aren’t they? “

If you had researched before posting you would not have made this post!


33 posted on 02/25/2018 12:56:55 PM PST by TexasGator (Z)
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To: dangus

“The shelf is already floating,”

But this is a ‘sheet’, not a shelf.


34 posted on 02/25/2018 1:00:13 PM PST by TexasGator (Z)
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To: Gen.Blather
I think the explanation is that an ice shelf F-R-E-E-Z-I-N-G unexpectly is actually a result of intense undersea natural resistance to calamitous global warming.

That's gotta be it.

35 posted on 02/25/2018 1:00:56 PM PST by Fightin Whitey
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To: Red Badger

If ‘scientists’, academics, and governments, weren’t in thrall to the myth of global warming, they’d be paying attention to the hard climate evidence contained in ancient ice cores, which clearly show a repeating pattern of cooling and warming over vast amounts of time.

The climate and temperature records we have gathered over the last several centuries, exactly match climate patterns of earlier epochs.

Anyone making the comparison of these two data sets, can easily predict where our climate is headed - and that is into a cooling phase, known as a ‘minimum’.

Bottom line - we’re now entering what many independent researchers and real climatologists are calling, a ‘little ice age’, and it’s coming on fast. Over the next two years, temperatures are going to fall hard enough that no one will be able to deny what’s happening.


36 posted on 02/25/2018 1:02:30 PM PST by Windflier (Pitchforks and torches ripen on the vine. Left too long, they become black rifles.)
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To: Red Badger

Please Donate Money NOW to stop it ?


37 posted on 02/25/2018 1:04:55 PM PST by butlerweave
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To: PGR88

It’s volume would also shrink by about 9% apon melting.


38 posted on 02/25/2018 1:07:36 PM PST by CrazyIvan (A gentleman arms himself for the protection of others.)
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To: Windflier
...they’d be paying attention to the hard climate evidence contained in ancient ice cores, which clearly show a repeating pattern of cooling and warming over vast amounts of time.

They know it. They choose to use it to their advantage to control the narrative and scam more money from ignorant folks.......

39 posted on 02/25/2018 1:10:59 PM PST by Red Badger (The people who call Trump a tyrant are the same people who want the president to confiscate weapons.)
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To: Red Badger
Ping. Beautiful!

Look how far away those clouds are.

40 posted on 02/25/2018 1:12:49 PM PST by philman_36 (Pride breakfasted with plenty, dined with poverty and supped with infamy. Benjamin Franklin)
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