Sea ice increases in Antarctica is due to glacier melt water runoff. It has nothing to do with cooling oceans. More sea ice in Antarctica is bad news. It means the glaciers and terraces are melting. It is spring in the southern hemisphere. The "Melt Water" run off is creating more sea ice. That is all it is.
February 10, 2015
Sea ice increases in Antarctica (click here) do not make up for the accelerated Arctic sea ice loss of the last decades, a new NASA study finds. As a whole, the planet has been shedding sea ice at an average annual rate of 13,500 square miles (35,000 square kilometers) since 1979, the equivalent of losing an area of sea ice larger than the state of Maryland every year.
“Even though Antarctic sea ice reached a new record maximum this past September, global sea ice is still decreasing,” said Claire Parkinson, author of the study and climate scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. “That’s because the decreases in Arctic sea ice far exceed the increases in Antarctic sea ice.”...
The scientific community has seen this before when the UK expedition measured marked increases in sea ice around Antarctica a few years ago.
What is new about this report is the global picture. Antarctica's sea ice increase is accompanied by a global picture of decreasing sea ice. That is new. But, it all fits the picture when realizing we are losing our ice fields and glaciers. It wasn't long ago politicians would get their hands on a report about advancing glaciers, but, they never bothered to see the global picture and why those advances occurred. This report does the hard work to bring global issues to focus when reporting ONE MEASURE of what may seem like relief to Earth's warming. It is inaccurate to speak in pieces of a global phenomena.
In 2004 the Taku Glacier was reported as having advances to it's width, height and length. The Taku Glacier is at the top of the Juneau Icefields. The Juneau icefields spans Alaska, USA and Canada. They are considered temperate glaciers because they react quickly to climate change. They are located near the Pacific Ocean and the temperature of that ocean.
In the very same time frame in 2004, the lowest glacier in elevation in the Juneau Icefields, the Mendenhall Glacier was in profound retreat.
Those two realities brought an understanding that warming was having different effects on different glaciers, but, why?
The picture to the left is the Mendenhall Glacier in Juneau, Alaska. It's terminus (front edge) at one time existed all the way to the falls to the right, the falls were ice and not water and the height of the glacier was not easily climbed. All the exposed ground in this picture was once buried under the Mendenhall Glacier.
Why was it the Mendenhall Glacier was retreating and losing ice and receiving no recharge (recharge is the snow that falls on top of the glacier. Eventually, that snow will compact under the weight of more snow and become the famous blue ice) while the Taku Glacier was advancing due to receiving recharge?
The DEW POINT.
The dewpoint is the temperature to which a given parcel of air must be cooled, at constant barometric pressure, for water vapor to condense into water. The condensed water is called dew. The dewpoint is a saturation point.
The water vapor of Juneau icefields that provided recharge to all the glaciers was no longer on ground level. The dew point had moved up in elevation. The air near the lowest glacier no longer was saturated with water to provide the snow for recharge. The Taku glacier was to benefit from the hotter troposphere.
So, in relation to sea ice, the global picture shows a decrease, while Antarctica actually showed an increase in sea ice. There is only one Antarctica. The loss of ice on the Antarctica continent resulted in a colder circumpolar temperature as the melted ice ranoff in that circulation. The colder temperature of that water flow resulted in larger amounts of sea ice.
The reason politicians are successful in the USA to divert the truth about Earth's warming is because the planet is different in every corner of the world. There is different geography is also different effects on climate. The best example of such microclimates occurs in Africa.
...Casey was taking part in a September 2012 research expedition (click here) to
Kilimanjaro to study the ice at the summit. For scale, bright tents that
were part of the scientists' base camp are visible in the lower left of
the northern ice field image.
Despite Mount Kilimanjaro’s location in the tropics, the dry and cold air at the top of the mountain has sustained large quantities of ice for more than 10,000 years. At points, ice has completely surrounded the crater. Studies of ice core samples show that Kilimanjaro’s ice has persisted through multiple warm spells, droughts, and periods of abrupt climate change.
But trends beginning more than a century ago suggest Kilimanjaro’s peaks may soon be ice-free. Between 1912 and 2011, the mass of ice on the summit decreased by more than 85 percent. Researchers say it’s no longer a question of whether the ice will disappear but when. Estimates vary, but several scientists predict it will be gone by 2060....
Mount Kilimanjaro clearly states when elevation exists in tropical rainforests, there are glaciers. However, in the case of Kilimanjaro, it was the forest at lower elevations that protected the ice from disappearing due to warming at higher elevations.
The rainforests were degraded by human activity and that lush green place in the foothills of Kilimanjaro provided water vapor to allow recharge at the top of the mountain.
When the rainforest disappeared so did the snow and Mount Kilimanjaro lost it's ice. In that reality know the negative feedback loop. As the forest supported the ice cap, the ice cap also cooled the foothills. The foothills rainforests would not return without considerable effort to begin THE BALANCE of the mountain all over again.
Global systems are balanced. When balance is lot there is unrelenting negative feedback loops that are difficult to bring about to restore, but, it is vital they are restored.
No individual event defines a global climate crisis. The entire picture is where the truth lies.
Sea ice increases in Antarctica (click here) do not make up for the accelerated Arctic sea ice loss of the last decades, a new NASA study finds. As a whole, the planet has been shedding sea ice at an average annual rate of 13,500 square miles (35,000 square kilometers) since 1979, the equivalent of losing an area of sea ice larger than the state of Maryland every year.
“Even though Antarctic sea ice reached a new record maximum this past September, global sea ice is still decreasing,” said Claire Parkinson, author of the study and climate scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. “That’s because the decreases in Arctic sea ice far exceed the increases in Antarctic sea ice.”...
The scientific community has seen this before when the UK expedition measured marked increases in sea ice around Antarctica a few years ago.
What is new about this report is the global picture. Antarctica's sea ice increase is accompanied by a global picture of decreasing sea ice. That is new. But, it all fits the picture when realizing we are losing our ice fields and glaciers. It wasn't long ago politicians would get their hands on a report about advancing glaciers, but, they never bothered to see the global picture and why those advances occurred. This report does the hard work to bring global issues to focus when reporting ONE MEASURE of what may seem like relief to Earth's warming. It is inaccurate to speak in pieces of a global phenomena.
In the very same time frame in 2004, the lowest glacier in elevation in the Juneau Icefields, the Mendenhall Glacier was in profound retreat.
Those two realities brought an understanding that warming was having different effects on different glaciers, but, why?
Why was it the Mendenhall Glacier was retreating and losing ice and receiving no recharge (recharge is the snow that falls on top of the glacier. Eventually, that snow will compact under the weight of more snow and become the famous blue ice) while the Taku Glacier was advancing due to receiving recharge?
The DEW POINT.
The dewpoint is the temperature to which a given parcel of air must be cooled, at constant barometric pressure, for water vapor to condense into water. The condensed water is called dew. The dewpoint is a saturation point.
The water vapor of Juneau icefields that provided recharge to all the glaciers was no longer on ground level. The dew point had moved up in elevation. The air near the lowest glacier no longer was saturated with water to provide the snow for recharge. The Taku glacier was to benefit from the hotter troposphere.
So, in relation to sea ice, the global picture shows a decrease, while Antarctica actually showed an increase in sea ice. There is only one Antarctica. The loss of ice on the Antarctica continent resulted in a colder circumpolar temperature as the melted ice ranoff in that circulation. The colder temperature of that water flow resulted in larger amounts of sea ice.
The reason politicians are successful in the USA to divert the truth about Earth's warming is because the planet is different in every corner of the world. There is different geography is also different effects on climate. The best example of such microclimates occurs in Africa.
Despite Mount Kilimanjaro’s location in the tropics, the dry and cold air at the top of the mountain has sustained large quantities of ice for more than 10,000 years. At points, ice has completely surrounded the crater. Studies of ice core samples show that Kilimanjaro’s ice has persisted through multiple warm spells, droughts, and periods of abrupt climate change.
But trends beginning more than a century ago suggest Kilimanjaro’s peaks may soon be ice-free. Between 1912 and 2011, the mass of ice on the summit decreased by more than 85 percent. Researchers say it’s no longer a question of whether the ice will disappear but when. Estimates vary, but several scientists predict it will be gone by 2060....
Mount Kilimanjaro clearly states when elevation exists in tropical rainforests, there are glaciers. However, in the case of Kilimanjaro, it was the forest at lower elevations that protected the ice from disappearing due to warming at higher elevations.
The rainforests were degraded by human activity and that lush green place in the foothills of Kilimanjaro provided water vapor to allow recharge at the top of the mountain.
When the rainforest disappeared so did the snow and Mount Kilimanjaro lost it's ice. In that reality know the negative feedback loop. As the forest supported the ice cap, the ice cap also cooled the foothills. The foothills rainforests would not return without considerable effort to begin THE BALANCE of the mountain all over again.
Global systems are balanced. When balance is lot there is unrelenting negative feedback loops that are difficult to bring about to restore, but, it is vital they are restored.
No individual event defines a global climate crisis. The entire picture is where the truth lies.
