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Antarctic ice growing, not shrinking
The
region comprises about 75% of (This means that more than 90 percent of the world's glaciers are growing thicker … while the media keeps yelling about the ones that are melting.) http://www.nature.com/news/2005/050516/full/050516-10.html * * *
Antarctic
snow pack increasing 5 feet per year Think
about that. Snow is accumulating over an area bigger than the * * * Misleading Reports Most
articles
make it sound as if all of Here’s
a map of Do you see that small piece of land jutting into the ocean toward the top left
corner of
Antarctica? That’s the part of Antarctica where the ice is melting - the
Saying that all of .
* * * Here's one of the
articles that I'm talking about, from the AP in London (April 21, 2005) that would have you to that Antarctica is melting. The headline shouts, "Study
Shows Antarctic Glaciers Shrinking."
I think this is another case of biased science and biased reporting, where what I The article could more honestly have shouted, “Most of Antarctica far colder than the much smaller Antarctic Peninsula” Here
are the first few paragraphs of the article, which was written by _____________ "The
first comprehensive survey of glaciers on the Antarctic peninsula has shown that the rivers of ice are shrinking, mostly because of warming of the local
climate. "It is unclear,
however, whether the increased temperature causing the shrinkage is a natural regional effect
or a result of human-influenced global warming, said the scientists who conducted the study, published this week in the journal Science. "Researchers
from the British Antarctic Survey and the U.S. Geological Survey analyzed more than 2,000 aerial photographs dating from 1940 and over 100 satellite images from the 1960s onwards. "They
calculated that 87 percent of the 244 glaciers going out to sea from the peninsula have retreated over the last 50 years and that the pace of shrinkage has accelerated over the last decade. Until now, scientists were uncertain whether the glaciers were growing or melting. "Fifty
years ago, most of the glaciers we look at were slowly growing in length but since then this pattern has reversed. In the last five years
the majority were actually shrinking rapidly," said the study's leader, Alison Cook of the British Antarctic Survey. "However, 32 glaciers go
against the trend and are showing minor advance. Had we not studied such a large number of glaciers we may have missed the overall pattern." "The
Antarctic peninsula is a small segment of the Antarctic continent, located at the South Pole, and the behavior of the
ice on the peninsula is not necessarily a reflection of what's going on elsewhere in Antarctica, said another of the investigators, David Vaughan of the British Antarctic Survey. "Temperatures seem to be much warmer there than on the rest of the continent. "Evidence from the main Antarctic ice sheet is mixed, with some areas of the continent showing shrinkage and others showing thickening." ________________ To
see the rest of the article, click here: So
. . . why is the Antarctic Peninsula so warm? I think it's because it's ____________________ According to a report in Science (Jan 2002), new measurements show that the ice in parts of Antarctica is thickening. One week earlier, an article in Nature reported that Antarctica's harsh desert valleys - long considered a bellwether for global climate change - have grown noticeably cooler since the mid-1980s.To put this in perspective, you must realize that the Antarctic Ice Sheet and Greenland Ice Sheets are almost twice as big as the contiguous United States. They're almost 100 times bigger than all of the rest of the world's glaciers put together. In other words, more than 99 percent of the world's glaciers are growing ... and all we hear about are the few that are melting. And
that's why sea levels are falling. That's where the water
comes from to * * * Antarctic
Ice Sheet Growing Thicker - Here’s
an e-mail that I received yesterday, Dec 13, 2004, from a geophysicist who was
stationed at the Byrd Station. He confirms what I’ve been saying all along
…
that the ice is growing thicker in Antarctica. Bob, I
spent much of the austral summer of 1969-70 as a geophysicist at Byrd Station While
at Byrd I made a trip to the original Byrd station site about 6 miles away. By
that time the station was totally buried but flagging marked an entry way.
We had to dig down about 10 feet to a hatch and then go down a long
ladder. It was an eerie
sight -
like something out of a science fiction film.
The roof had been braced with 14"x14" timbers which were
snapped like toothpicks and 55 gallon fuel cans, which were stacked and welded
together were compressed to about 12 " in height.
We had to crawl through much of the station.
Equipment was still in place in the infirmary and there were still plates
of food on the mess hall tables. Dick
Kuberry
* * * Satellites show overall increases
in Antarctic Sea Ice Cover Around Antarctica
Sea ice now covers the area for three weeks longer
per year than it did 21 years ago. Annals of Glaciology, Aug
22, 2002 * * *
Back to expanding glaciers. See also Greenland
Ice Cap Growing Thicker
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