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Earth Science

Amount of Floating Antarctic Ice Plunges To Record Lows (time.com) 172

Posted by BeauHD from the white-knuckle-ride dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Time: The amount of ice circling Antarctica is suddenly plunging from a record high to record lows, baffling scientists. Floating ice off the southern continent steadily increased from 1979 and hit a record high in 2014. But three years later, the annual average extent of Antarctic sea ice hit its lowest mark, wiping out three-and-a-half decades of gains -- and then some, a NASA study of satellite data shows. Serreze and other outside experts said they don't know if this is a natural blip that will go away or more long-term global warming that is finally catching up with the South Pole. Antarctica hasn't showed as much consistent warming as its northern Arctic cousin.

At the polar regions, ice levels grow during the winter and shrink in the summer. Around Antarctica, sea ice averaged 4.9 million square miles (12.8 million square kilometers) in 2014. By 2017, it was a record low of 4.1 million square miles (10.7 million square kilometers, according to the study in Monday's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Antarctic sea ice increased slightly in 2018, but still was the second lowest since 1979. Even though ice is growing this time of year in Antarctica, levels in May and June this year were the lowest on record, eclipsing 2017, according to the ice data center.
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Amount of Floating Antarctic Ice Plunges To Record Lows More

Amount of Floating Antarctic Ice Plunges To Record Lows

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  • Something brewing underneath? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I am not an Arctic climate expert but it sounds like something beneath the surface dramatically warmed up.

  • Southern Ocean as Insulation? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I don't remember what is now called the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Ocean [wikipedia.org]Southern Ocean being declared a separate ocean when I was in school. Recently, though, I'd read more about its closed current insulating Antarctica against warmer Atlantic/Pacific/Indian Ocean waters. In my understanding, that meant that Antarctic warming is largely due to atmospheric conditions, rather than oceanic conditions. Could it be that the Southern Ocean ice was from atmospheric effects melting Antarctica and now th

  • We're past the tipping point, IMHO (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Qbertino ( 265505 ) <moiraNO@SPAMmodparlor.com> on Tuesday July 02, 2019 @04:31AM (#58859866)

    Time for decisive action was in the eighties, when I was growing up. Now we're screwed. The only remaining question is, are we screwed really bad or are we going to die out, along with large portions of the biosphere we're killing just now. If we make a hard turn now, modern civilization might have a chance, but my optimism is fading. Fast.

    • There will be lots of new beach front property in Russia and Canada.

    • Speak for yourself. As far as I'm concerned the question is will I get to live out my life in anything like comfort. I wasn't stupid and/or irresponsible to have kids in this environment (it was obvious that we were over our carrying capacity as we are behaving, every one of you who had children while this was obviously true is a willful part of the problem) and I don't believe in souls or gods, so there's really nothing else for me to worry about.

      I think it's a damn shame that no species is likely to ever

      • People with kids ought to be out fighting climate change by literally any means necessary. Anything less is child abuse, and a failure of responsibility. You have a job, do it

        There's hardly any difference between your own kids and somebody else's, so why would one be worth saving, and the other one not ?

        • There's hardly any difference between your own kids and somebody else's, so why would one be worth saving, and the other one not ?

          There's a huge difference. You made your own kids, you didn't make someone else's. There may not be any difference to the universe, but there's a difference to you. A lot of people make mistakes of this kind, for example talking about bullshit like "universal rights". There is no such thing, which is why rights have to be defended. But if we defend them, there is such a difference. If you don't think there's any difference, swap some kids around and see how the parents react.

          I never invested myself in this

          • There's a huge difference. You made your own kids, you didn't make someone else's

            So if you had adopted kids you wouldn't care about them ?

            • So if you had adopted kids you wouldn't care about them ?

              I haven't adopted kids, because I don't want any. I don't care more about children than about other people. I care about people in a generalized, logical way (we have to act like we care about one another whether we feel it or not, or else life is shitty) and also in a personal, specific way (I want to protect and care for people who I depend upon, or who make me feel good in one way or another) so I'm not immune to the suffering of others or any such. I just don't subscribe to the idea that children are wo

      • I think it's a damn shame that no species is likely to ever get off this planet once we're gone, since we've used up the majority of easily available ores, but it won't affect me.
        The ore is gone, but now the refined metal is here ... much easier to mine and reuse :D
        Except for stuff we "burn" the planet is not losing anything (well, dying out specimem of course).

        • The ore is gone, but now the refined metal is here ... much easier to mine and reuse :D

          The ferrous material will go to rust by the time the next species comes up. The aluminum will probably corrode by then, too. Copper, definitely. Without ready sources of iron and copper ore, they'll have a hard time getting to electrolytics...

          • Yes, it will corrode.
            But at the points where it was used. Which simply makes it new ore.
            Every old city would be a *high concentration* mine for all those materials.

    • actually the time for action could have been the late 1800s when we first realized the problem or the 1960s when it was being studied by think tanks and reported to governments and corporations with high accuracy and predictions that have come true

    • The only remaining question is, are we screwed really bad or are we going to die out

      Neither. We're talking about a rise in ocean of 20cm after a century. The science behind the greenhouse effect is well established. Most of the negative effects you hear about are highly hypothetical.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by vix86 ( 592763 )

      I'm of the same opinion. I think we're still missing portions of our understanding with the ecosystems and there are probably a number of positive feedback systems that will help push us over the +3C mark easily. I honestly believe we'll have to build a sun shade in space but the problem will be whether we'll have pushed far enough ahead with the tech to make it doable. We'll need huge scale mining and manufacturing on the moon in order to make it possible.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Agripa ( 139780 )

      Time for decisive action was in the eighties, when I was growing up. Now we're screwed. The only remaining question is, are we screwed really bad or are we going to die out, along with large portions of the biosphere we're killing just now. If we make a hard turn now, modern civilization might have a chance, but my optimism is fading. Fast.

      We had decisive action; we effectively banned nuclear power.

  • There's a continual steady decline of *global* sea volume ice clearly measured from satellites. Everyone needs to arguing about minutiae with denialists because they can't say a damn credible thing in response to this basic fact of steady global decline: https://matthol.smugmug.com/Ju... [smugmug.com] And everyone knows, the cause is linked to the steady increase (at an *increasing* rate) of atmospheric CO2 "insulation" being created by burning fossil fuels - clearly measured for decades: https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ [noaa.gov]

    • Glacier retreat is also of interest. And undeniable. Just recently there were stories about bodies from the past being exposed as the ice/snow melted off of them.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

      Is additional frozen precipitation greater than the ice/water runoff? Runoff is very much influenced by temps (as is precip type).

  • Antarctica hasn't showed as much consistent warming as its northern Arctic cousin.

    There is a one absolutely huge glaring difference between the north and south poles... the south isn't completely covered with water... land is showing through the water.... enough land to be called a continent.

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