Antarctic ice models “not correct”, sea level rise “complicated”

There’s some surprising reaction to the press release we covered on WUWT recently.

Here’s some excerpts:

Knowing how the massive ice sheets atop  Antarctica and Greenland work is key to
predicting how global warming could raise sea  levels and flood coastal cities. But a new study  upends what scientists thought they knew. It  turns out it’s not just ancient snow that makes  up the ice sheets, but water deep under the  sheets also thaws and refreezes over time.

To put it in non-scientific terms, lead scientist  Robin Bell told msnbc.com, the study
redefines “how squishy” the base of ice sheets can be. “This matters to how fast ice will flow and how fast ice sheets will change.”

“It also means that ice sheet models are not correct,” she said, comparing it to “trying to
figure out how a car will drive but forgetting to  add the tires. The performance will be very
different if you are driving on the rims.”

Reporting in this week’s issue of the peer-reviewed journal Science, Bell and his team
described how ice-penetrating radar peeled  back two miles of ice a million years old in the
center of Antarctica.

…

This radar image shows part of the East Antarctic ice sheet (top), a bulge of refrozen ice (center), and the profile of a mountain range buried deep below (outlined in red).

Full story plus an interactive tool here

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East Antarctic Ice Sheet getting thicker from underneath

Image: Montana.edu

From AAAS online:

Widespread Persistent Thickening of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet by Freezing from the Base

Abstract

An International Polar Year aerogeophysical investigation of the high interior of East Antarctica reveals widespread freeze-on that drives significant mass redistribution at the bottom of the ice sheet. While surface accumulation of snow remains the primary mechanism for ice sheet growth, beneath Dome A 24% of the base by area is frozen-on ice. In some places, up to half the ice thickness has been added from below. These ice packages result from conductive cooling of water ponded near the Gamburtsev Subglacial Mountain ridges and supercooling of water forced up steep valley walls. Persistent freeze-on thickens the ice column, alters basal ice rheology and fabric and upwarps the overlying ice sheet, including the oldest atmospheric climate archive, and drives flow behavior not captured in present models.

Received for publication 8 November 2010.Accepted for publication 18 February 2011.Robin E. Bell1,Fausto Ferraccioli2,Timothy T. Creyts1,David Braaten3,Hugh Corr2,Indrani Das1,Detlef Damaske4,Nicholas Frearson1,Thomas Jordan2,Kathryn Rose2,Michael Studinger5, andMichael Wolovick1

+ Author Affiliations

1Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, Palisades, NY 10964, USA.

2British Antarctic Survey, High Cross, Madingley Road, Cambridge CB3 0ET, UK.

3Center for the Remote Sensing of Ice Sheets, Kansas University, Lawrence, KS, USA.

4Bundesanstalt für Geowissenschaften und Rohstoffe, Hannover, Germany.

5Goddard Earth Science and Technology Center, University of Maryland Baltimore County, MD, and NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, MD, USA. FEATURED ON FOODPRESS - Serving up the hottest dishes on WordPress.com

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Pyramids found in Antarctic now

Well now there’s talk all over the internet about pyramids in Antarctica. What appears to be causing all the discussion is this picture:

Frankly, I think we’re looking at plain ordinary mountains here, albeit ones of unusual apparent symmetry. But suppose we ARE looking at pyramids (and I think the size of these mountains would preclude that, but that’s just me), or, to put it differently, supposed there WERE pyramids in Antarctica? What would it mean?

Well, for one thing, it would confirm the speculations of many Atlantologists (including, incidentally, the Nazis), who believe that the ice-covered continent was in fact Atlantis, the continent literally being “sunk” under water, in this case, ice. The presence of such structures would raise the bar considerably not only for Atlantology but also for the possible motivations of the Nazi expedition in late 1938 and early 1939, and make it likely – if they discovered such structures during their aerial reconnaissance flights over the southern continent – that they decided to follow up with further investigations.

The reason any discovery of such structures on Antarctica would be significant is rather obvious, for the possibility would be quite strong that if they could be excavated (a mighty big if in Antarctica’s case!) the sites might yield some significant records or artifacts of a lost human past. One might even speculate that the discovery of ancient records and technologies might be considered a top prize. Such a discovery could rationalize not only the curious Nazi expedition, but also the postwar attempts not only to internationalize the continent but to keep the curious visitor OUT of the continent.

While I remain skeptical at this moment, the story is nonetheless worth watching, providing, of course, that we don’t get the usual mix of internet hysteria and hype (and yes, already the story has been predictably linked to extra-terrestrials and secret Nazi flying saucer research bases. Some people never learn….)

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