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Bye-bye, Antarctica?
Another big chunk of ice starts to crumble way down south. But is the continent as a whole warming or cooling?
Andrew Leonard [2008-03-26]

  • Actually -- Citizen_X,

    I think you are not quite correct in this statement:

    The Antarctic Peninsula used to be a volcanic arc, but went inactive over 3 million years ago. The Shetland Islands comprise the still-active section.

    -- Citizen_X

    This article in Science a few years ago:

    Originally published in Science Express on 9 June 2005

    Science 15 July 2005:

    Vol. 309. no. 5733, pp. 464 - 467

    DOI: 10.1126/science.1106888

    Reports

    Heat Flux Anomalies in Antarctica Revealed by Satellite Magnetic Data

    Cathrine Fox Maule,1* Michael E. Purucker,2 Nils Olsen,1 Klaus Mosegaard1

    States this:

    We found that the heat flux underneath the ice sheet varies from 40 to 185 megawatts per square meter and that areas of high heat flux coincide with known current volcanism and some areas known to have ice streams.

    ...

    D) Geothermal heat flux. The pink dots mark known volcanoes and coincide with areas of elevated heat flux, especially around Victoria Land. Areas of high heat flux are found close to the shoulder of the West Antarctic rift system (17). Because the heat flux model is valid only in continental areas, we have no results underneath Ronne Ice Shelf.

    That [D] image is located here:

    http://www.sciencemag.org/content/vol309/issue5733/images/large/309_464_F1.jpeg

    -- rhenley
    [Read rhenley's other letters]
    Wednesday, March 26, 2008 05:58 PM
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