
Near Antarctica, Saltier Seas Mean Less Ice, Study Finds (nytimes.com) 47
Some of the water around Antarctica has been getting saltier. And that has affected the amount of sea ice at the bottom of the planet. From a report: A study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that increases in salinity in seawater near the surface could help explain some of the decrease in Antarctic sea ice that have been observed over the past decade, reversing a previous period of growth.
"The impact of Antarctic ice is massive in terms of sea-level rise, in terms of global warming, and therefore, in terms of extremes," said Alessandro Silvano, a senior scientist at the University of Southampton studying the Southern Ocean and lead author of the study. The findings mean "we are entering a new system, a new world," he said. The Times adds: "the Department of Defense announced it would be no longer be providing some of the satellite data that researchers use to monitor changes in sea ice."
"The impact of Antarctic ice is massive in terms of sea-level rise, in terms of global warming, and therefore, in terms of extremes," said Alessandro Silvano, a senior scientist at the University of Southampton studying the Southern Ocean and lead author of the study. The findings mean "we are entering a new system, a new world," he said. The Times adds: "the Department of Defense announced it would be no longer be providing some of the satellite data that researchers use to monitor changes in sea ice."
Re: salt desolves ice...news at 11 (Score:3)
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The country used about 164,000 tons of road salt in 1940, U.S. Geological Survey data shows. It broke 1 million tons in 1954, 10 million in 1985, and now averages more than 24 million tons a year.
“We have only recently begun to recognize the serious long-term consequences of excessive road salt use,” said Marc Edwards, a Virginia Tech corrosion expert who helped uncover the lead drinking water crisis in Flint, Michigan.
The Northeast is a top contributor. ClearRoads, a national consortium that researches and promotes winter road maintenance solutions, tracks how much road salt state governments use every year. At the top are five New England states that used the most salt per mile of road lanes over the past four years: Rhode Island (44.2 tons), Massachusetts (34.6 tons), New York (28.0 tons), New Hampshire (25.1 tons) and Vermont (23.3 tons).
https://smartaboutsalt.wildapr... [wildapricot.org]
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Rational argument with what? Where? (Score:2)
'Nuff said? Or should I drag The Chaos Machine into it? Spoiler alert? Don't tell me how it comes out, but so far the justification for the title is unclear.
Oh, and don't forget to check for Funny. There must be some somewhere around here...
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The real news would be WHY the seas have been saltier around Antarctica. (If that is true). Where did the salt come from? It would need an awful lot of salt to produce a measurable effect in all the seas round Antarctica.
TFA mentions "sea ice", and later - separately - quote Alessandro Silvano as saying, ""The impact of Antarctic ice is massive in terms of sea-level rise".
Obviously the melting of sea ice has no effect on sea level, although the melting of glaciers on land does.
Re: salt desolves ice...news at 11 (Score:3)
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> The real news would be WHY the seas have been saltier around Antarctica. (If that is true).
"When Dr. Silvano and his coauthors first noticed the rising salinity, they doubted the signal was real, suspecting an error in the satellite data. But as physical measurements from ocean instruments began to confirm the trend, they realized the signal was accurate."
> Where did the salt come from? It would need an awful lot of salt to produce a measurable effect in all the seas round Antarctica.
"Because freshe
Re: salt desolves ice...news at 11 (Score:2)
Melting ice also desalinated the water.
So it would be expected that less ice = less melting = more salt.
Is implied causality backwards?
Miracles: F'ing Science, How Do They Work? (Score:5, Insightful)
You fellows get so excited whenever we have to revise the science around climate change.
I'm genuinely curious, do you believe we'll one day revise it out of existence? If that's your hope, I'm going to have to burst your bubble right now...
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What wonderful theater you're putting on for all of us.
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I am now quite confused. You ARE joking, aren't you?
Re: Miracles: F'ing Science, How Do They Work? (Score:2)
You forgot the "Hallelujah! Amen!" at the end of your post.
Or the </sarcasm> tag.
Re:Miracles: F'ing Science, How Do They Work? (Score:4, Insightful)
We still have problems modeling cloud cover.
And we have revise the models to make them more accurate or at least better describe the error bars.
What climate deniers fail to grasp is that not knowing the complete answer is not the same as knowing nothing. Science has always been an incremental approach.
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And sometimes science has been hopelessly wrong.
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Re:Miracles: F'ing Science, How Do They Work? (Score:4, Insightful)
The global warming people ...
You think we all meet up and plan this stuff out and work in lock step? That climate science is all done in one building where we everyone sees each other everyday and attends the same meetings?
The messy reality is that there has been a flood of papers on the subject for 50 years from wide range of people and various disciplines. What you generally hear is only the bits and pieces that the media passes along to the public. Scientists that are neck deep in their actual subject are constantly trying to work out how to communicate their own research to each other. And a handful of them actively working out how to communicate those results to the public.
His home has a bigger carbon footprint than blocks of homes. Flies to eco conferences in hugely polluting jets. Its always do as I say not as I do.
Just because Al Gore is a hypocrite doesn't invalid climate science. There are people who practice what they preach, and get ridiculed for that too. So damned if you do and damned if you don't.
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This exact type of hysterical reporting is what's creating skeptics. I want to see the evidence the reporters used to come to that conclusion, but they **NEVER** provide it.
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https://www.sciencemediacentre... [sciencemediacentre.org]
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also really, this, this, is your version of "hysterical", they even qualify their words. hope you are not married lol jesus christ
The devastating floods in Texas are a stark reminder of how intensifying extreme weather events driven by climate change are interacting with land-use change, urbanisation, and aging infrastructure to produce severe impacts. While individual flood events are influenced by multiple factors, we know that warmer air holds more moisture, increasing the likelihood of intense rainfal
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When the facts and evidence of climate hysterics predicted the end of the world so many times and got it wrong, makes you wonder, doesn't it?
Please feel free to cite a single example of a peer-reviewed paper that supports climate change which "predicted the end of the world and got it wrong." All you have to do is find one that set a date for the end of the world due to climate change, that date came and went, and the world didn't end.
Or you can move the goalposts back a bit and show where the accepted science couldn't explain a short-term deviation from the overall expected trend -- like the "plateau" in global temperatures for a few years i
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"scientists" now ask you to disbelieve your own experiences and trust their WEF-funded propaganda. Arguing with you lots is futile because you deny the existence of corporate-funded or government-funded research that give scientists the conclusion and ask them to arrive to it by any means necessary, else they won't get their papers published and therefore don't get paid.
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The crappy journalism off it irks me.
I like to imagine of the old movie trailer voice over saying it: "In a world ..." [youtube.com]
To me the real news here (Score:5, Insightful)
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Don't Look Up
This link provides more detail ... (Score:5, Insightful)
https://joannenova.com.au/2025... [joannenova.com.au]
NYTimes provided no links to the study.
Antarctica gaining ice... (Score:1)
Of course, NASA recently released satellite data showing that total Antarctic ice has increased in recent years. Now, maybe that is ice on land, since sea ice is decreasing - especially around the peninsula, due to volcanic activity. However, the actual ESA press release notes that this doesn't make any sense either, since melting sea ice should reduce the saltiness of the water.
At this point, honestly, it may be measurement errors. If it's not, it may be that the salinity is responsible for the loss of s
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Of course, NASA recently released satellite data showing that total Antarctic ice has increased in recent years. Now, maybe that is ice on land, since sea ice is decreasing - especially around the peninsula, due to volcanic activity.
You are correct. One report was regarding an increase in land ice, while the other report was regarding a decrease in sea ice.
At this point, honestly, it may be measurement errors. If it's not, it may be that the salinity is responsible for the loss of sea ice, rather than any sort of climate change. Further investigation needed.
The question is not whether the increased salinity is likely causing the decrease in sea ice; that seems like a safe presumption. The question is what's causing the increased salinity?
Re:Antarctica gaining ice... (Score:5, Informative)
This article [sciencealert.com] written by one of the authors of the study provides some insight on what is happening.
Normally, the cold, fresh surface water sits on top of warmer, saltier water deep below. This layering (or stratification, as scientists call it) traps heat in the ocean depths, keeping surface waters cool and helping sea ice to form.
Saltier water is denser and therefore heavier. So, when surface waters become saltier, they sink more readily, stirring the ocean's layers and allowing heat from the deep to rise.
This upward heat flux can melt sea ice from below, even during winter, making it harder for ice to reform. This vertical circulation also draws up more salt from deeper layers, reinforcing the cycle.
A powerful feedback loop is created: more salinity brings more heat to the surface, which melts more ice, which then allows more heat to be absorbed from the Sun.
Out of sight, out of mind (Score:3)