TIL Is there a something odd in Antarctica?

in #weather8 years ago

Perhaps there is.

3 days ago I posted on a possible tipping point being reached in the Arctic:

https://steemit.com/weather/@gavvet/climate-tipping-point-of-interest-to-anyone

Some of the comments suggested that perhaps there was a compensatory affect at the opposite pole going on in the antarctic that balanced out any negative effects of the unseasonable ice loss in the North.

It should be common knowledge that glaciers are also melting globally and that in Antarctica ice shelves are breaking up.

Well today I learned that some of the mechanisms of Antarctic ice shelf break up are starting to be understood.

After studying Antarctica’s warming climate for decades, scientists are making a surprising discovery: In some places, much of that abnormal warmth is invading in the form of powerful, downhill winds called föhn (pronounced “fone”) winds.

...now suspects that these winds contributed to a series of dramatic glacial collapses that have been steadily redrawing the map on the east side of the Antarctic Peninsula for the last 30 years.

For the full detail please read further here:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/11/foehn-winds-melt-ice-shelves-antarctic-peninsula-larsen-c/

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Tough to know who to believe about some of this stuff. I find anything put out by NG to be suspect. They clearly have an agenda, and have been caught more than once fabricating stories to support it.
Folks in southern Chile are reporting that the glaciers there are clearly larger than in anyone's memory. What to make of that?
I honestly don't know. This is one of those fights I have no dog in. If it's because of CO2, I do know how to fix it. It's actually quite simple, and we can keep eating beef. :)

an estimated ten million active volcanoe's on the ocean floor, several of them under the floating souther sea ice might have something to do with it.

Hardly

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_submarine_volcanoes

Or perhaps these million are on Europa's ocean floor

Most of the ocean floor is made of volcanic material, the key here is how many of these are active in modern times? I hardly think theextinctionprotocol is a great place for unbiased reports

Are you saying that the data is not as important to you as who tells it to you?
AFTER you used Wikipedia as a source?

It is a contributing factor, however one which is already included in current climate change models.

what weight did they give it?
how many volcanoes in their estimation?
how well is the model depicting reality?

I was who made the comments about he Antarctic. Thanks a lot for consider my questions. I would only suggest you, if you let me, to do not look for info in the National Geographic any more if you can avoid it. I do not know if you know this https://gizmodo.com/national-geographic-is-now-owned-by-a-climate-denier-1729683793

It may be interesting to see what is under all that ice. We may learn more about the continent in the next few years than we have since its discovery. A great time for exploration.

The window for exploring the continent may not last too long. Planetary warming and cooling has been going on for millennia. The Goldilocks period human civilization has recently thrived in seems to be nearing an end.

Luckily our planetary orbit of Sol has not changed. So as the solar activity cycles move through their oscillations, one day Terra will return to a prolonged Goldilocks period again.

I have always wondered how many thousands or even hundreds of years humans have been exploring Antarctica to get a truly detailed account of what has been happening at the southern most continent. Is it expected that ice sheets will grow forever or do they go through natural cycles?

For most of my life there have always been two forces of nature preventing extensive exploration of Antarctica. The first being the treacherous waters surrounding the continent. This has been overcome by air travel. The second is extreme cold and ice. This has been overcome by advancing technology. We know that the continent has mountains, volcanoes, and lakes thanks to technology.

We suspect that Antarctica was once part of the super continent Pangaea. Imagine what we could learn and observe if only a portion of the continent revealed land, valleys, rivers and lakes once again. Because as I suspect, Antarctica was not always covered by sheets of ice.

If those ice sheets covering Antarctica do melt, I plan to adapt to that world and let my curiosity wonder what will be found there. Humans have an extraordinary ability to adapt and explore.

Either through warming or tectonic plate action, one day Antarctica will be free from its icy blankets. I will likely not be alive to see it, but I can wonder what will be found there.

We live on an ever changing planet traveling in an ever changing universe. What you perceive as constant in the physical world is not lasting when you look back from the perspective of eternity. The courses of rivers change, mountains rise and fall, islands appear and disappear, the continents move, break apart, and join, and the climate warms and cools.

It is humbling to think about what we do not know and exhilarating to think about what we will learn.

@gavvet, great post! It made me think about all the possibilities right in front of us!

Steem on,
Mike

Yes, I was just watching a show about that. It's most likely volcanos underneath that create massive holes of water.

I think that in the Antarctic , the near future, the glaciers will melt . Nature and human activities , will do the trick ! And it won't change !

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