MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency
Coastal Antarctic permafrost melting faster than expected
For the first time, scientists have documented an acceleration in the melt rate of permafrost, or ground ice, in a section of Antarctica where the ice had been considered stable. The melt rates are comparable with the Arctic, where accelerated melting of permafrost has become a regularly recurring phenomenon, and the change could offer a preview of melting permafrost in other parts of a warming Antarctic continent. Read full article
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Disclaimer & comment rulesHere is another account of temperature records in the Dry Valleys, it is from 1970 and shows temperatures rising to 11.6 deg C : http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00288306.1971.10421941
Jul 25th, 2013 - 09:02 am - Link - Report abuse 0“It can be seen that temperatures in the upper layers were consistently above freezing in December and January. In fact, inspection of the three-hourly data showed that under clear-sky conditions temperatures at the 8 cm level rose above freezing during the middle part of the day from about 20 November through to 15 February each year. The maximum temperature recorded at the 8 cm level was 11.6°c on 9 January 1970 while the minimum was - 50°c on 2 August 1970. The level of permanent freezing is estimated to occur at about 40 cm.”
The upper temperature would seem to be higher than that observed by Levy, although in a different valley. This is another attempt to generate a scare about nothing and in fact NASA says that since the start of the satellite record, total Antarctic sea ice has increased by about 1 percent per decade. Of course that is due to global warming, nka (now known as) “climate change”.
NASA also says the Dry Valleys have existed in their present form for 3.5 to 4 million years, yet a 12 year data set is promoted as evidence of looming catastrophe.
This albedo effect will almost certainly produce a coastal valleys positive feedback, bringing an accelerating warming trend around certain parts of the continental margin.
Jul 25th, 2013 - 12:05 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Whether, in itself, it has the capacity to 'melt the Continent' is doubtful;
but we have seen the way it can happen in the Arctic with the mobilization to the atmosphere of permafrost methane clathrates. ...
Now, That's a positive feedback!
One thing,
we are thinking in time terms that the average human can readily grasp.
In a hundred years, a thousand years, the whole world could look massively different.
We *will* have contributed, not least by the attention-spans of politicians and the other agendas of the world's industrialists.
The world looked “massively different” 100.500, 1000 yrs ago it changes every day little by little, so what?
Jul 25th, 2013 - 12:52 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Remember there used to be farming and livestock on Greenland not too long ago. It may be coming back.
You can't say man's emissions had anything to do with a warm Greenland 500 yrs ago now can you?
Yankeeboy, “An Old Captivity” by Neville Shute touches on that period in Greenlands history, and the US's. An enjoyable book...
Jul 25th, 2013 - 04:53 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Yankee,
Jul 25th, 2013 - 07:10 pm - Link - Report abuse 0I have worn myself out over the science of this over my working lifetime and since.
500 years ago those most influential populations that affected the local weather were, arguably and surprisingly, the aborigines of Australia with their routine bush-burning.
Go back a 100 years to the coal-based industial revolution in Europe and the impact has been additive on top of normal variations.
Go back just 5 years and the addition of fracking of oil/gas shales will cause incremental increase over and above the CO2 and methane added by coal/oil.
Greenland of 500 years ago - or pre-1400s, to be precise, was no more than 4,000 non-inuits in the Eastern settlements and zero in the Western settlement who had already died out at the onset of the Little Ice Age. Their contribution to global warming was, as you surmise, infinitesimal.
So different now in an industrial world carbon-based economy. The extra billions deforesting the surface of the earth and burning off the carbon for heat & fuel will do more to make climatological matters worse than was ever possible even 100 years ago.
The catastrophy 'cusp' ensures that matters eventually change spasmically and are irreversible in practice.
But because this extends beyond the term of office of any politician it is beyond comprehension
... “That is a matter for those in office at that time”.
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