Re: Help with thick atmosphere world

On 15 dets, 04:35, "Raven"
<jon.lennart.beck.its.my.n...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
"Crown-Horned Snorkack" <chornedsnork...@xxxxxxx> skrev i meddelelsennews:8fcea3c2-c4eb-4d87-bac1-08c0c1bca0ed@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Probably not. Greenland is almost landfast to Ellesmere Land in
northwest, and has a massive ice sheet. On the other hand, Ellesmere
Island itself has a limited ice cover and a lot of ice-free area - as
does the north and northeast coast of Greenland beyond the outlets of
the main inland ice sheet.

I have read that if the Greenland icecap were removed - without otherwise
a significant change in climatic conditions - it would not return.
Greenland *with* the icecap lies mostly above the line of perennial snow,
which is the conditions under which a glacier is formed and maintained. But
Greenland *without* an icecap would lie mostly beneath that line - indeed,
it would be a gicantic C-shaped island, with a great lagoon bordered by
mountains in the east and with an outlet in the west. The icecap was formed
during a glacial period where we are currently in an interglacial period.
When the glacial period ended and the northern icesheets receded, they
mostly disappeared in northern North America and northwestern Eurasia - but
not in Greenland.

Presumably not. The northwestern Canadian Arctic archipelago has
limited glaciers on Ellesmere Island mountains, and Victoria Island is
as completely free of glaciers as Great Britain. In the interior of
continent, Fairbanks, Klondike and Yellowknife have extremely cold
winters with modest snowfall and short but warm summers when snow
melts completely and there is sufficient growing season for forests.
At the same latitude, the southern end of Greenland has mild winters
with heavy snowfall and chilly summers when the snow does not melt,
leading to glacier sheet. Siberia has similar and even more extreme
climate than North American interior.

Even during the period of heaviest glaciation, Eurasia was covered in ice
only in the northwest. Siberia and Beringia were icefree, precisely because
they had much less precipitation. What little fell was able to melt in
summer.

I suspect that if a large continent lay on a pole, the center would be
completely free of icecap in summer, and quite probably warm enough to
support forests.

Provided there were no circumcontinental ocean currents blocking warmer
currents from equatorial regions? We have a large continent lying on the
south pole now.

Antarctica is bigger than Australia and almost as big as South
America, but much smaller than Eurasia. The northernmost parts of
Antarctica are closer to South Pole than the southern tip of Greenland
is to North Pole.

It is almost completely covered in ice, even areas with so
little precipitation that they are effectively deserts, because even summers
are so cold that what little snow falls cannot melt or sublimate away.

And this applies even in the northernmost parts of Antarctica, because
the ocean remains chilly in summer and the coastal areas do not get
enough sunlight to be a source of heat.

But I wonder if even Greenland wouldn't be ice-free in the lowlands if
the Arctic Sea were, such as if there were greater circulation between the
Arctic Sea and the equator. If Iceland hadn't existed, would the Gulf
stream extend all the way to the Arctic Sea?

Jon Lennart Beck.

Maybe it was something else that blocked the Gulf Stream. Like
freshwater from Siberian rivers?

.

Relevant Pages

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