The first day of winter is coming soon to the Southern Hemisphere. It doesn't look like it, yet. In a recent report stating there is more sea ice off the coast of East Antarctica, it is proof the added coldness to the east coastal region is due to significant melting and runoff from the Blue Ice.
The West Antarctica Ice Sheet is still degrading with the latest collapse at Wilkens.
Wilkins ice shelf collapse continues (click here)
Cross-posted from The Great Beyond
Following the collapse on April 4 of a narrow ice bridge that had connected the Wilkins ice shelf with a small island off the Antarctic Peninsula, the northern ice front of the ice sheet is beginning to disintegrate.
A high-resolution radar image taken on April 20 by the German TerraSAR-X satellite shows large icebergs being released from a rift zone near Latady Island. Scientists expect up to 3,400 square kilometretres of the Wilkins Ice Sheet to break into icebergs before a new stable ice front will form.
Quirin Schiermeier
There is a gross disparity in that reality.
While some point to the added sea ice off East Antarctica as good news, it is not. It simply proves what this blog has documented frequently, that the top of the 3 miles Blue Ice was having chronic 'insults' to the integrity of the frigid air mass. That frigid air mass was noted on multiple occassions to have literally fallen like a water fall into the waters off East Antarctica.
New climate report says global warming ‘human-induced’ (click title to entry - thank you)
01:00 AM EDT on Wednesday, June 17, 2009
...And unlike many positions taken during the Bush administration, it pulls no punches on what scientists believe is happening with the climate, and why.
“Observations show that warming of the climate is unequivocal,” says the report’s summary. The warming “is due primarily to human-induced emissions of heat trapping gases.”
Most of the emissions come from the burning of coal, gas and oil, the report says, and important contributions come from the clearing of forests, agricultural practices and other activities.
Focusing on New England, the report says that if warming continues throughout this century, people in New Hampshire will experience summers similar to what occurs today in North Carolina....
