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Today an international conference broke up in Cancun, Mexico, after reaching agreement on some modest steps to help poorer nations cope with the effects of climate change. As we approach the official start of winter in the Northern Hemisphere, it's not so easy to wrap our minds around the potential impacts of warmer temperatures -- but a telling reminder that we're living in a warmer world came in 2002, when Antarctica's Larsen B ice shelf broke up dramatically.
This image shows the state of things on March 7, 2002, as seen by the imaging spectrometer aboard NASA's Terra satellite. Thousands of slivered icebergs and a large light blue area of very finely divided bits of ice float where the shelf once was. Brownish streaks within the floating chunks mark areas where debris was exposed from the former underside and interior of the shelf. The last phases of the shelf's retreat totaled about 1,000 square miles -- which is roughly equal to the land area of Rhode Island. You can click through a time-lapse series of pictures showing the breakup at NASA's Earth Observatory website.
The ice shelf's collapse is today's offering in the Cosmic Log Space Advent Calendar, which features views of Earth from space every day until Christmas. Here are the previous pictures in the set, along with links to three other Advent calendars with space themes:
- The Cosmic Log Space Advent Calendar so far
- Door 1 for Dec. 1: Shuttle in spotlight
- Door 2 for Dec. 2: 'Alien' lake seen from space
- Door 3 for Dec. 3: Egypt's river of light
- Door 4 for Dec. 4: Tallest building reaches for the sky
- Door 5 for Dec. 5: Russia's dazzling delta
- Door 6 for Dec. 6: Space skipper vs. the world
- Door 7 for Dec. 7: Pearl Harbor from the heavens
- Door 8 for Dec. 8: Listening for E.T.
- Door 9 for Dec. 9: Blast from the past
- Door 10 for Dec. 10: Volcano caught in the act
- The Big Picture at Boston.com: Hubble Advent calendar
- Planetary Society: Solar system Advent calendar
- Zooniverse Advent calendar
Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page or following @b0yle on Twitter.
Leave a Comment:
alan with all the ice melting in the south pole, what do you think of all the coastal citys like in the southern united states or other countrys plans for flood control will be like ?
It's hard to predict what the long-term effects would be ... The melting of floating ice wouldn't have much effect, but the disappearance of ice sheets on land could have an impact. I haven't heard much about the effect on places such as the U.S., but for places that are already having flooding problems, such as Bangladesh, the impact could be serious. Looks like other folks are weighing in on this issue as well...
The South-Asian country of Bangladesh is prone to the natural disaster of flooding due to being situated on the Ganges Delta.
River deltas - SINK due to compressing/decaying organic matter/clay soil and they are constantly moving toward the Ocean. Geology 101 - NOTHING to do with AGW. Think New Orleans in the USA, has been SINKING from the first day it was build and many areas are below sea level now.
There is a distinction to be made between flooding, which is the normal annual inundation of the land, and floods which are abnormal conditions when the river level is much higher than normal. This often occurs during the Monsoon Season. Bangladesh is also at the mercy of changes made upstream such as the large scale cutting of wooded areas.
Thailand just had the wost flooding in over 50+years. Much of this was due to the encroachment of man building into the flood planes. One area in Isan where the construction of the ASIAN Games venue blocked one prior 'Flood Control Area' and another new manufacturing development 'access road' that acted like a giant dike and flooded a entire city.
Bangkok is also build on a river delta and much of the city is less than 2+meters above sea level. And they have been located on this site for longer than the USA has existed. Flooding during the Monsoon Season is NORMAL and has been happening for CENTURIES.
Here is a study preformed to determine the sea-level rise/fall in the Pacific by Vincent R. Gray | August 16, 2010 of Geosciences Australia. see http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/south_pacific.html
Abstract
The SEAFRAME sea-level study on 12 Pacific islands is the most comprehensive study of sea level and local climate ever carried out there. The sea level records obtained have all been assessed by the anonymous authors of the official reports as indicating positive trends in sea level over all 12 Pacific Islands involved since the study began in 1993 until the latest report in June 2010. In almost all cases the positive upward trends depend almost exclusively on the depression of the ocean in 1997 and 1998 caused by two tropical cyclones. If these and other similar disturbances are ignored, almost all of the islands have shown negligible change in sea level from 1993 to 2010, particularly after the installation of GPS leveling equipment in 2000.
If you throw out some of the strongest supporting data with incomplete reasoning, some of the islands still show an increase in sea level from 1993 to 2010.
Vincent R. Gray is a Chemical Engineer. He worked on petroleum, timber, adhesives, building materials, forensic science and coal. Since 1990 he has "specialised" in Climate Science, publishing many papers on the subject. He is an Expert Reviewer on all of the IPCC Reports and wrote a book entitled 'The Greenhouse Delusion: a Critique of 'Climate Change 2001' about the Third Report, which is currently available on Amazon.com.
Is that an unbiased opinion? The author is not connected in any way with the SEAFRAME study. He's leveraging their data. The author appears to have no background in chaotic systems, climatology, complex system simulation, fluid dynamics, mathematics, statistics or any other specialization that would give him a unique insight into any of the data. I wouldn't categorically dispute his conclusions, he's obviously intelligent. I would question his motivation, perspective and look for peer reviewed support.
You can take shots at the messenger if you want.
The bottom line is the Data/Facts show - almost all of the islands have shown negligible change in sea level from 1993 to 2010, particularly after the installation of GPS leveling equipment in 2000.
That the IPCC is using a weather Anomaly to support their findings. Which cover a shorter period of time. The IPCC is also on record for IGNORING the sea level data from many EU Countries that have been compiling sea level data for over TWO Centuries.
When you look at the methodology of how the Data is collected and how they are choosing their start and stopping points. Then you will have a understanding of what the Data really represents.
The latest temperature spike after the last 'Ice Age' is increasing at a SLOWER rate and is still 2+degrees Centigrade BELOW the average HIGHS of the last 5 temperature spikes. see ice cores (EPICA Community Members 2004, Petit et al. 1999).
If mankinds ADDITIONAL CO2 were effecting the World temperature averages. This temperature spike would have increased FASTER and be HIGHER.
Presently the World 'Heat Content' is DECREASING and has been for almost a DECADE. see http://www.ocregister.com/opinion/ocean-50155-heat-temperatures.html or http://joannenova.com.au/2009/07/ocean-temperatures-the-new-bluff-in-alarmism/
Why did ice break off? Because the glaciers are growing and pushing more ice onto the water. It is ocean currents and wave action that cracks the ice and causes it to break.
The current temperature at the airport in Antarctica is -24 F. And it is snowing which will later compress into more ice. The warmest it is forecast to be in the next week is -28 F. Does anyone think any ice is melting?
http://www.wunderground.com/cgi-bin/findweather/getForecast?query=-78.44999695,106.87000275
Classic quote from the second link:
Disprove that...scientists. Of course, if it was my toaster then one side of the Galaxy would be burnt and the other not hot at all. Maybe God has a better toaster? LOL
Dr Allison said there was not any evidence of significant change in the mass of ice shelves in east Antarctica nor any indication that its ice cap was melting. "The only significant calvings in Antarctica have been in the west," he said. And he cautioned that calvings of the magnitude seen recently in west Antarctica might not be unusual.
"Ice shelves in general have episodic carvings and there can be large icebergs breaking off - I'm talking 100km or 200km long - every 10 or 20 or 50 years."
Ice core drilling in the fast ice off Australia's Davis Station in East Antarctica by the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Co-Operative Research Centre shows that last year, the ice had a maximum thickness of 1.89m, its densest in 10 years. The average thickness of the ice at Davis since the 1950s is 1.67m.
Read more: http://www.news.com.au/story-0-1225700043191#ixzz17skZvacW
The Earth is physically dynamic. Lands will rise up when more water are on the oceans to push the basins inward and cause the lands to rise higher, the plates to move and cause earthquakes and volcanoes to erupt. The notion that sea level rises will inundate many lands run counter to scientific data that lands have been rising. When in some places the precipitation is reduced, elsewhere there is flooding. When ice is removed from land, the forests will take over. Earth's climate is influenced by gravity, by precession, and the movement of water from ice, to sea, to vapor and the amount of sunspots following Jupiter's orbit. To show cases of ice loss without showing where the dynamic compensation is taking place is a form of deception.
It is not acceptable to take a unique event like an ice shelf breaking off in 2002 as evidence of a warming climate. Similarly, using extreme weather events anecdotally is unscientific. You must find a valid way to characterize extreme weather events worldwide (floods, snowfalls, warms spells, cold spells, drought, tornadoes, hurricanes, etc.) and have statistics taken over a lengthy period to show that these events are growing in number and intensity. I have trouble believing 1 degree Celsius, averaged over the surface of the earth has the dramatic effects the alarmists claim whether it be number and intensity of storms, or the melting of glaciers. They want you to think the world is coming to an end and we are doomed (e.g., Jim Hansen selling his book on Letterman's show).