24 hour loop - Missing 12 PM, 3 PM and 9 PM

May 1, 2007

6 PM

Temperature satellite of Antarctica

Dynamics have shifted.

There is a major heat intrusion over East Antarctica from Australia which came from the Sumatra region of the equator. The temperate regions are still hovering around zero with an inching toward 1 C. Vostok has dropped in temperture from -47 to -57 with a drop in humidity as it remains at an elevation away from any winds or vortex. The very top ice is immune to this event as it appears now. Vostok reflects that.

Dome C has risen in temperature and is no longer the coldest spot on the continent. It changed temperature from -60 to -50 C. It is receiving the transfer system heat. There is sublimination of the ice at this location. Most reporting stations at 9 to 10 thousand feet register an increase in temperature with conditions of blowing snow. Humidities are higher and the snow is more than likely from the subliming ice and due to continued significantly colder temperatures below -50 C. If the snow remains in the region it might act as regard, but, if the wind carries it to sea then it's lost to the mass balance of the continent and will contribute to sea level rise.

24 hour loop

May 1, 2007

3:00 PM

Antarctica surface winds show the same dynamics as below. The surface winds from Australia over East Antarctica are significant while the higher tropspheric vortex arrives to west of the peninsula.

May 1, 2007

6 PM

Antarctica jet stream satellite.

The heat transfer vortex can be noted arriving on WAIS west of the peninsula while pushing frigid air from the top ice off the continent east of the peninsula.

Over east Antarctica. Opposite of WAIS (west Antarctica) there is an 'on shore' wind coming from Australia. That wind is lower tropsphere and does not reach the top ice. It diverts to circulation around the ice sheets but exits back out to The East Wind Drift ( the body of water circulating around Antarctica.)

May 1, 2007

1302 gmt

Southern Hemisphere

The vortex arrived west of the peninsula and there is significant heat transfer.

...thinking cold is cold enough is not the understanding that leads to understanding icemelt and Human Induced Global Warming...

"Something is Moving under the Ice" is a recently released study at NASA's earth observatory. Although these scientists don't make sweeping conclusions due to the need for more investigation, I can make that conclusion.

Science, 7 March 2003. The 'role' of ice shelves and ice 'terraces' to the protections of large ice formations and the relationship with sea level rise. There is a driect correlation.

Glacier Surge After Ice Shelf Collapse

Hernán De Angelis,* Pedro Skvarca
The possibility that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet will collapse as a consequence of ice shelf disintegration has been debated for many years. This matter is of concern because such an event would imply a sudden increase in sea level. Evidence is presented here showing drastic dynamic perturbations on former tributary glaciers that fed sections of the Larsen Ice Shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula before its collapse in 1995. Satellite images and airborne surveys allowed unambiguous identification of active surging phases of Boydell, Sjögren, Edgeworth, Bombardier, and Drygalski glaciers. This discovery calls for a reconsideration of former hypotheses about the stabilizing role of ice shelves.
Instituto Antártico Argentino, Cerrito 1248, C1010AAZ Buenos Aires, Argentina. * To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: glacio@dna.gov.ar

This is a statement by a very astute scientist by the name of Helen Amanda Fricker:

...In late May 2006, Fricker was concentrating on West Antarctica, around the Whillans and Mercer Ice Streams on the Ross Ice Shelf. She looked for the small elevation changes that would mark grounding lines, the place where the ice shelves stopped resting on land and started floating on the ocean. Marking the grounding lines would improve tidal models, which would improve understanding of ice shelf behavior, which influences glaciers, which influence sea level. Important work with a long-term payoff, but not terribly exciting.

Then she found something she didn’t expect.

Fricker found an elevation change, but two things about it struck her as weird. For one, it was in the wrong place—near a feature known as Engelhardt Ice Ridge—inland from where the ice shelf grounding line should have been. For another, the elevation change was far bigger than the typical tidal movement of 1 or 2 meters (3 to 6.5 feet). Between October 2003 and November 2005, the area she was examining had dropped roughly 9 meters (nearly 30 feet). “I wasn’t expecting to find this at all,” Fricker recalls. “I was shocked.” Something under the ice had to be moving....

...“Near the grounding line, there were lots of changes that occurred, lots of crevasses [cracks in the ice] that you could see because the moving crevasse ridges and troughs had shifted between images,” explains Scambos. The MODIS images confirmed that the elevation inland of the ice shelf grounding line had changed over an oval-shaped area about 15 by 30 kilometers. The area had clearly dropped in elevation, consistent with Fricker’s ICESat interpretation....

continued below...

This aerial photo was taken downstream from Subglacial Lake Engelhardt (nicknamed Lake Helen), looking toward the Ross Ice Shelf. Ridges on the ice surface are crevasses, or cracks in the ice. Shifting and deepening of crevasses that are visible in satellite images are indicators of ice movement. (Photo courtesy Christina Hulbe, Portland State University.)

National Geographic made a better presentation of the issue of 'ice flow' and how it is STOPPED by the resistance of ice shelves.

Antarctic Glaciers Surged After 1995 Ice-Shelf Collapse
John Roachfor National Geographic News
March 6, 2003
When a huge floating shelf of ice hinged to the northern end of the Antarctic Peninsula disintegrated in January 1995, several glaciers that were backed up into it surged towards the sea, according to a pair of Argentinean researchers.
The discovery marks the first positive evidence that glacial surge follows an ice shelf collapse. It may lead scientists to revive the previously discarded theory that ice shelves acts as dams that prevent inland glaciers from slipping into the seas.

continued below...

Between October 23, 2003, and June 2, 2006, average elevation of the ice surface along this Geoscience Laser Altimeter System (GLAS) track dropped from roughly 53 meters to about 44 meters. After March 3, 2006, the elevation drop was negligible, indicating that the event that caused the sinking had ended. (NASA image by Robert Simmon, based on GLAS data courtesy Helen Amanda Fricker, Scripps Institution of Oceanography.)

This elevation change in a subglacial lake was due to the fact it was no longer supported in it's dynamics by an ice shelf off the Antarctica continent.

...Given those expectations, what actually appeared to be going on beneath the Whillans Ice Stream was rather odd. “While one isolated lake lost about two cubic kilometers of water, all the other lakes gained about an equivalent amount of water,” says NASA scientist Robert Bindchadler. “But it’s not the same water because the lake that lost water is downstream of the other lakes and in a separate basin.” The amount of water that accumulated in the other lakes is nearly equal to all the water that pressure and geothermal heat could likely have produced under the Whillans Ice Stream during that period. “Yet—and here’s the really odd part—,” he emphasizes, “this ice stream is slowing down at a consistent rate of about 1 or 2 percent per year. Now if water is the lubricant that lets ice go fast, why, if there is more water, is the ice stream going slower? We have ideas how to answer this, but the seeming contradiction shows us that we don’t understand this system yet.”

So what exactly is happening here. I was hoping Scientist Helen Amanda Fricker would make that call. She is a geophysicist with Scripps. They can't make that call? I will.

The 'distal' Lake Engelhardt is draining into the Ross Sea by hydrostatic pressure. The crevasses are widening because there is sublimination of the top ice. As they widen there is more exposure to the heat delivered to the continent by vortexes and there is more solar radiation reaching more ice surface. As the icemelt runs down the crevasses there is accumulation at the base of thy ice. Therefore there is more instability at the base. Move movement. Probably at this point more traverse of the ice that can be measured similar to that of the Greenland Ice's 'meander.'

As the increased water content is realized at the base, the hydrostatic pressure increases, as the hydrostatic pressure increases the rise and fall of the ice on the continent and the ice sheet will be noted. With the rise and fall of the ice there is 'meander' and that will allow more water to run into the upstream lakes. As these lakes fill the 'tilt' of the ice mass that covers the land mass changes causing a closing of the distal lake. The reason the ice is not moving as fast as before is because there is more fiction with the land surface. Friction over time will build heat and therefore will accumulate it's own under ice water again. The distal lake will fill and when it does the hydrostatic pressure from the upstream lakes will cause a movement again of water now accumulating at the base of the crevasses.

HUMAN INDUCED GLOBAL WARMING is melting Antarctica !

continued below...I am looking for a specific satellite shot, I'll be back.

This is not the exact picture I was looking for but it will do. The Filcher Ice Shelf has a 'crack' in it. This is an earlier than I wanted to find. The 'crack/fissure' currently reaches all the way to the mountain rig to the right of the crevasse. Some would say this is a natural process as delivered by the pressure of the moving Recovery Ice Stream. And to a certain extent it is, but, all the processes I have noted with Human Induced Global Warming are natural processes, but, the difference is their magnitude and dynamics are grossly out of proportion to anything previous. So. The dynamics here are realized as 'normal' but the fact is the entire ice sheet is gone and this is more than just 'caving' of an iceberg. Icebergs aren't supposed to be the size of Rhode Island. The Filcher Ice Sheet is disappearing.