Re: Antarctic Glaciers' Sloughing Of Ice Has Scientists at a Loss

On Mar 16, 8:45 am, "La N" <nilita2004NOS...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
"Jack Linthicum" <jacklinthi...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message

news:1174039739.537149.150990@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx





There is a possibility that different forces are at work in Greenland
than those seen in Antarctica, and one may be man-made the other a
natural occurrence.

Duncan Wingham, University College London,said he thinks the final
paper of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will say much
the same about the Antarctic. "I believe it will be along the lines of
'Something is happening beneath the ice sheets, but we don't really
know what it is yet.' "

In the same issue of Science, other researchers report that air
pollution from industrialized areas is collecting over the Arctic and
creating "Arctic haze." The pollution comes from industrial and
natural sources -- aerosols, chemicals that can form into ozone and
black carbon, which is produced by incomplete burning of fossil fuels.
The gradual warming of the large forests below the Arctic has resulted
in an increase in forest fires, which produce air pollutants that can
increase warming further.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/15/AR200...
Antarctic Glaciers' Sloughing Of Ice Has Scientists at a Loss

By Marc Kaufman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, March 16, 2007; A02

Some of the largest glaciers in Antarctica and Greenland are moving in
unusual ways and are losing increased amounts of ice to the sea,
researchers said yesterday.

Although the changes in Greenland appear to be related to global
warming, it remains unclear what is causing the glaciers of frigid
Antarctica and their "ice streams" to lose ice to the ocean in recent
years, the researchers said.

"In Greenland we know there is melting associated with the ice loss,
but in Antarctica we don't really know why it's happening," said
Duncan Wingham, an author of the review released today in Science
magazine. "With so much of the world's ice captured in Antarctica,
just the fact that we don't know why this is happening is a cause of
some concern."

The Antarctic ice loss, which Wingham said is not caused by melting
but rather by the pushing of ice streams into the ocean by several
glaciers in the west of the continent, has picked up speed in recent
years. But Wingham said that because researchers did not have good
measures of the depth of the Antarctic ice shelf until about 10 years
ago, scientists do not know whether this is a natural variation or a
result of human activity.

Complicating the situation for those studying Antarctica, some parts
of the continent are gaining ice depth through snowfall while
temperatures on the tip of the Antarctic peninsula, the continent's
closest point to South America, are rising faster than almost anywhere
else on the planet. The surprisingly fast-moving glaciers are largely
on the West Antarctic ice ***.

Wingham, of University College London, and Andrew Shepherd of the
University of Edinburgh said satellite radar readings show that
overall, each year the ice loss from Greenland and Antarctica amounts
to about 10 percent of the rise in the global sea level, which totals
about one-tenth of an inch per year. The net loss of Antarctic ice is
estimated to be 25 billion metric tons a year, despite the growth of
the ice *** in East Antarctica.

Because such a large percentage of the world's ice is found in those
two locations, scientists are carefully watching for signs of
increased ice loss. If that process accelerates, researchers say, it
could result in a substantial, and highly disruptive, increase in sea
levels worldwide.

In Greenland, glaciers appear to be moving more quickly to sea because
melting ice has allowed the *** to slide more easily over the rock
and dirt below. In Antarctica, the loss is believed to be associated
with the breaking off into seawater of ice deep under the ice ***
with little-understood internal dynamics that put increased pressure
on the massive ice streams.

Wingham said he thinks the final paper of the Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change will say much the same about the Antarctic. "I
believe it will be along the lines of 'Something is happening beneath
the ice sheets, but we don't really know what it is yet.' "

The panel, sponsored by the United Nations, concluded last month with
more than 90 percent certainty that the burning of fossil fuels and
other human activities are causing the planet to warm significantly.

In the same issue of Science, other researchers report that air
pollution from industrialized areas is collecting over the Arctic and
creating "Arctic haze." The pollution comes from industrial and
natural sources -- aerosols, chemicals that can form into ozone and
black carbon, which is produced by incomplete burning of fossil fuels.
The gradual warming of the large forests below the Arctic has resulted
in an increase in forest fires, which produce air pollutants that can
increase warming further.

I dunno, Jack. Once we start exporting wine from the Antarctic, I think
it's time we start thinking of moving toMars. Lots of ice up there
evidently!

Finally read about your evidence

March 16, 2007
Huge Deposit of Ice Is Gauged at the South Pole of Mars
By REUTERS

WASHINGTON, March 15 (Reuters) - A spacecraft orbiting Mars has
scanned huge deposits of ice at its south pole so plentiful they would
blanket the planet in 36 feet of water if they were liquid, scientists
said on Thursday.

The scientists used a joint NASA-Italian Space Agency radar instrument
on the European Space Agency Mars Express spacecraft to gauge the
thickness and volume of the ice, which covers an area larger than
Texas.

The deposits, up to 2.3 miles thick, are under a polar cap of white
frozen carbon dioxide and water, and appear to be composed of at least
90 percent frozen water, with dust mixed in, according to findings
published in the journal Science.

Scientists have known that water exists in frozen form at the Martian
poles, but this research produced the most accurate measurements so
far of just how much there is.

They are eager to learn about the history of water on Mars because
water is fundamental to the question of whether the planet has ever
harbored microbial or some other life. Liquid water is a necessity for
life as we know it.

Characteristics like channels on the Martian surface strongly suggest
that the planet was once very wet, a contrast to its present arid
state.

Jeffrey Plaut of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.,
who led the study, said the same techniques were being used to examine
similar ice deposits at the Martian north pole. Radar observations in
late 2005 and early 2006 provided the data on the south pole, Dr.
Plaut said, and similar observations were made of the north pole in
the past few months.

Dr. Plaut, part of an international team of two dozen scientists, said
a preliminary look at this data indicated the ice deposits at the
north pole were comparable to those at the south pole.

"Life as we know it requires water and, in fact, at least transient
liquid water for cells to survive and reproduce," Dr. Plaut said. "So
if we are expecting to find existing life on Mars, we need to go to a
location where water is available. So the polar regions are naturally
a target because we certainly know that there's plenty of H2O there."

Some of the new information even hints at the possible existence of a
thin layer of liquid water at the base of the deposits.

Although images taken by NASA's Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft made
public in December suggested the presence of a small amount of liquid
water on the Martian surface, researchers are baffled about the fate
of most of the water. The polar deposits contain most of the known
water on Mars.

Dr. Plaut said the amount of water in the Martian past might have been
the equivalent of a global layer hundreds of meters deep, while the
polar deposits represent a layer of perhaps tens of meters.

"We have this continuing question facing us in studies of Mars, which
is: where did all the water go?" Dr. Plaut said.

"Even if you took the water in these two ice caps and added it all
up," he said, "it's still not nearly enough to do all of the work that
we've seen that the water has done across the surface of Mars in its
history."

.