Re: Arctic ice

On Jan 6, 2:54 am, Weatherlawyer <Weatherlaw...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Once the ice has formed, the surface temperatures are less meaningful
than they would be if they had any chance of affecting water
temperatures.

OTOH in a warm summer, the reservoir in the Arctic is heated 24 hours
a day. And with clear sunny days there, there is no frosty night.to go
with it. The sunlight gets to enter 2 to 3 hundred feet.

Not that I believe for one moment that the state of the ice is
dependent in any way on the insolation it gets day by day. No matter
what season or whatever.

Nor do I suppose it has all that much to do with ocean currents per
se. (I believe the heat source causes the currents if the truth be
known.)

Here is something I received a few days back but have only just
opened:

"NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory <info@xxxxxxxxxxxx> 4 Jan

MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICE
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov

NEWS RELEASE: 2008-001 Jan. 3, 2008

Hot Cyclones Churn at Both Ends of Saturn

Despite more than a decade of winter darkness, Saturn's north pole is
home to an unexpected hot spot remarkably similar to one at the
planet's sunny south pole. The source of its heat is a mystery. The
first detailed views of the gas giant's high latitudes from the
Cassini spacecraft reveal a matched set of hot cyclonic vortices, one
at each pole.

"We had speculated that the south pole hot spot was connected to the
southern, sunlit conditions," said Glenn Orton, a senior research
scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena. "Since the
north pole has been deprived of sunlight since the arrival of winter
in 1995, we didn't expect to find a similar feature there."

The infrared data show that the shadowed north pole vortex shares much
the same structure and temperature as the one at the sunny south pole.
Both polar vortices appear to be long-lasting and intrinsic parts of
Saturn and are not related to the amount of sunlight received by one
pole or the other."

Bear in mind the following long distance theorising is coupled with
the novelty of the data:

"The hot spots are the result of air moving polewards, being
compressed and heated up as it descends over the poles into the depths
of Saturn," said Leigh Fletcher, a planetary scientist from the
University of Oxford and the lead author of the Science paper. "The
driving forces behind the motion, and indeed the global motion of
Saturn's atmosphere, still need to be understood."

I'll say.

First off I'd like to know how they not only got warm air to fall and
then not just fall but for the whole system they describe to enact.

"The vortex is framed by the distinctive, long-lived and still
unexplained polar hexagon.

Winter lasts about 15 years on Saturn. Researchers anticipate that
when the seasons change in the coming years and Saturn's north pole is
once again in sunlight, they will be able to see a swirling vortex
with high eye walls and dark central clouds like the one now visible
at the south pole. "But Saturn may surprise us again," says Fletcher.

"The fact that Neptune shows a similar south polar hot spot whets our
appetite for the strange dynamics of the poles of the other gas
giants," Fletcher says.

Fletcher's research was funded by the United Kingdom's Science and
Technology Facilities Council."

Meanwhile I am glad that they got things on our poles sorted.
.

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