Intro: "Data collected from a NASA ice-watching satellite reveal that the vast ice shelves extending from the shores of western Antarctica are being eaten away from underneath by ocean currents, which have been growing warmer even faster than the air above."
First complete map of the speed and direction of ice flow in Antarctica. (image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCI)
Antarctic Ice Melting From Below by Warming Ocean
30 April 12
Antarctica's ice shelves are being melted away by warm ocean currents underneath, shows data collected from a NASA satellite.
ata collected from a NASA ice-watching satellite reveal that the vast ice shelves extending from the shores of western Antarctica are being eaten away from underneath by ocean currents, which have been growing warmer even faster than the air above.
The animation above shows the circulation of ocean currents around the western Antarctic ice shelves. The shelf thickness is indicated by the color; red is thicker (greater than 550 meters), while blue is thinner (less than 200 meters).
Launched in January 2003, NASA's ICESat (Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite) studied the changing mass and thickness of Antarctica's ice from its location in polar orbit. An international research team used over 4.5 million surface height measurements collected by ICESat's GLAS (Geoscience Laser Altimeter System) instrument from Oct. 2005 to 2008. They concluded that 20 of the 54 shelves studied - nearly half - were losing thickness from underneath.
Most of the melting ice shelves are located in west Antarctica, where the flow of inland glaciers to the sea has also been accelerating - an effect that can be compounded by thinning ice shelves which, when grounded to the offshore seabed, serve as dams to hold glaciers back.
Melting of ice by ocean currents can occur even when air temperature remains cold, maintaining a steady process of ice loss - and eventually increased sea level rise.
"We can lose an awful lot of ice to the sea without ever having summers warm enough to make the snow on top of the glaciers melt," said Hamish Pritchard of the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge and the study's lead author . "The oceans can do all the work from below."
The study also found that Antarctica's winds are shifting in response to climate change.
"This has affected the strength and direction of ocean currents," Pritchard said. "As a result warm water is funnelled beneath the floating ice. These studies and our new results suggest Antarctica's glaciers are responding rapidly to a changing climate."
ICESat completed operations in 2010 and was decommissioned in August of that year. Its successor ICESat-2 is anticipated to launch in 2016.
Read more on NASA’s news release here.
Jason Major is a graphic designer living in Dallas, Texas. He writes about astronomy and space exploration on Universe Today and also on his blog Lights In The Dark, Discovery News and National Geographic News.
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The report presents the two distorted maps shown below (click the images to view full size) - density equalizing cartograms depicting a comparison of undepleted CO2 emissions by country for 1950-2000 versus the regional distribution of four climate sensitive health consequences (malaria, malnutrition, diarrhea, and inland flood-related fatalities).
The first image shows the world in terms of carbon emissions. America, for instance, is huge. So is China. And Europe. Africa is hardly visible.
The second map shows the world in terms of increased mortality -- that is to say, deaths -- from climate change. Suddenly, America virtually disappears. So does Europe. Africa, however, is grotesquely distended. South Asia inflates.
[snip]
"Loss of healthy life years as a result of global environmental change (including climate change) is predicted to be 500 times greater in poor African populations than in European populations," states the UCL Lancet Commission report bluntly.
http://antemedius.com/content/climate-change-effects-hugely-unequal-globally
Maybe they'll be more inclined to "deal" with it? If they live through it?
image sequences from the Extreme Ice Survey, a network of time-lapse cameras recording glaciers receding at an alarming rate, some of the most vivid evidence yet of climate change.
20 minute video:
http://antemedius.com/content/canary-coal-mine-climate-change-time-lapse-photography
Is this man-made ? NO NO NO NO NO NO
Can we change it ? NO NO NO NO NO NO
What the article does not say is that there are parts of Antarctica that are now colder, and that new ice is forming on the opposite coastline.
This "polar shift" theory of yours is a poorly researched conspiracy theory. Discover magazine roundly debunked it (I'm on a phone, I can't copy/paste a link for that, but it was on the first page I googled 'polar shift causing climate change'). The VAST body of evidence, researched over decades, by hundreds of scientists, all over the planet, using the most advanced technology ever seen ( like satellites that continually measure ice thickness over time, from space) all indicates that the factors that are changing the climate, like the levels of co2 in the atmosphere, are man made. They all agree. There are a few outliers who have tried to shunt responsibility for the problem off of humanity's shoulders, but it's just that - irresponsible.
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