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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]

  • Another Salon drive by shooting,

    Gee Andrew,

    I don't know why you don't look at the original reports and articles in Science and Nature first before pushing these Exxon blog drifts on us.

    For instance I thought these recent Science notes are of more substantive interest:

    Science 18 January 2008:

    Vol. 319. no. 5861, p. 259

    DOI: 10.1126/science.319.5861.259d

    Editors' Choice: Highlights of the recent literature

    CLIMATE SCIENCE: Whither Antarctic Ice?

    Determining how much the Antararctic ice sheet may contribute to sea-level rise through global warming depends on an accurate and precise understanding of the mass balance of two broadly defined regions: the coast and the interior.

    Essentially, the coasts appear to be losing mass while the interior is closer to being in balance, but considerable uncertainty remains in current estimates of mass change for the ice sheet as a whole.

    In order to better constrain the coastal element of the problem, Rignot et al. have analyzed satellite interferometric synthetic-aperture radar observations of Antarctica's coastline from 1992 to 2006 to estimate ice flux to the oceans.

    These measurements, which cover 85% of the coast, show that although East Antarctica probably is not losing mass, widespread losses in West Antarctica totaling 132 ± 60 Gt occurred in 2006, and that ice losses that year at the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula amounted to 60 ± 46 Gt.

    Ice mass loss from the coasts increased by 75% over the period of the study.

    These results highlight the importance of changes in glacier dynamics, which are so poorly understood that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change could not include them in projections of sea-level rise in its 2007 report.

    http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/319/5861/259d

    Science 11 January 2008:

    Vol. 319. no. 5860, p. 153

    DOI: 10.1126/science.319.5860.153b

    News Focus: AMERICAN GEOPHYSICAL UNION MEETING:

    Climate Tipping Points Come In From the Cold by Richard A. Kerr

    AMERICAN GEOPHYSICAL UNION, 10-14 DECEMBER 2007, SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA

    http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/319/5860/153b?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&andorexacttitle=or&andorexacttitleabs=or&fulltext=Antarctica&andorexactfulltext=or&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=10&sortspec=relevance&fdate=1/1/2008&tdate=3/31/2008&resourcetype=HWCIT

    Unfortunately for you I suppose, it's a subscription site unlike Salon's open advert access.

    -- rhenley
    [Read rhenley's other letters]
    Wednesday, March 26, 2008 03:09 PM
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