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West Antarctica Warming Faster Than Thought
New submitter dgrobinson writes "NY Times reports that West Antarctica has warmed more over the last half century than was first thought. A paper released Sunday by the journal Nature Geoscience (abstract) found that the temperature at a research station in the middle of West Antarctica has warmed by 4.4 degrees Fahrenheit since 1958. That is roughly twice as much as scientists previously thought and three times the overall rate of global warming, making central West Antarctica one of the fastest-warming regions on earth."
Water almost up to my keyboard.
Their they're doing there hair.
A single weather station? Whatever happened to "weather's not climate?"
Also, why is this single weather station suddenly getting a paper? It's been there since 1958, there is nothing here we didn't know.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Thats only at the South Pole
Antarctica is BIG
Bigger than the 48 states
Which way is west in antarctica?
Face north, then turn left.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Is 4.4 much? Or is it not so much? ... disgusting.
Scientific articles that suddenly use Fahrenheit are
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
I just looked at Antartica in Google Maps. According to Google, it's bigger than the rest of the continents combined! Forget about raising ocean level. That fucker's gonna extinguish the sun if it melts.
In a few centuries we'll all be buying beachfront Antarctic condos.
Kelvins below freezing would not make any sense. Kelvins are absolute units. 0 K is absolute zero. 1 K is one degree Celsius above absolute zero. On the other hand, degrees Fahrenheit below freezing makes perfect sense. One degree Fahrenheit below freezing is 31 degrees Fahrenheit.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
That still doesn't correct any ambiguity. The "western half" of Antarctica is the part to your left if you are standing at the pole facing along the prime meridian towards Greenwich.
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I'm guessing the portion west of the prime meridian and east of the international date line. Just a guess.
...is an interesting place. It "stick out" more than the rest of the continent and hence is surrounded by more water, and it's home to at least 6 surface volcanoes (http://icecap.us/images/uploads/AntarcticVolcanoes2.jpg).
A few years back scientists discovered at least a bunch of sub-oceanic volcanoes with at least one merrily bubbling away. They remarked on how warm the waters were and how this had caused unique "oases" of lifeforms all along the extent. (http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/press/press_releases/press_release.php?id=1541}
These and the unusual "surrounded by water" nature of this area are more likely contributors to localized melting.
Ferret
Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc
Its all part of those in science who are evil and want to confuse you. I've also wondered the same thing, but if your just measuring a differential temperature 1K is the same as 1C when talking relative temperature.
I certainly hope not.
It's how Geordi solved the locked intercooler problem in season 7 episode 14 - the Ferengi warp coils had damaged the nydomium lines to the point where crystalline anti-pores were building up inside the reaction chamber. He had to redirect the hauser inverters to counterfeed through their own backup loop just to keep the Marfa separators from clogging.
Unlike Earth, whose temperature varies as one moves closer to or farther from the equator, Jupiter's temperature depends more on height above the surface. This is because heat is driven not by the sun but by the interior of the planet. Nice try, though!
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
You got in an argument with your boss? About weather? And you want to keep this job? If the latter, I'd figure out a way to prove your boss right and then suck up. Or you can just be right and hungry. Just a thought.
My brain is overly lubricated
It will be hard calling you six years ago.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
I just looked at Antartica in Google Maps. According to Google, it's bigger than the rest of the continents combined! Forget about raising ocean level. That fucker's gonna extinguish the sun if it melts.
On the internet, nobody knows if you're stupid or actually making a joke about distortions in size due to mapping projections.
This is a better link, and has more info: http://phys.org/news/2012-12-rapid-west-antarctic-ice-sheet.html
I'm having a little trouble visualizing this concept.
I can imagine North, or South Antarctica, but those don't seem very useful either.
...omphaloskepsis often...
http://data.un.org/Explorer.aspx?d=CLINO
About 5 minutes on google, didn't really check for much else being that i don't really care, but that should give you a starter point at the minimum.
-Noc
What specific "natural influence" is causing the Earth to warm, and where is the evidence that supports this idea? To me, the "nature done it" is as much a cop out for global warming as "God done it" is for evolution. What are the details of this "natural influence"? Is overall solar output increasing significantly? I remember an extended solar minimum a few years ago, during which the temperatures on Earth did not go down. Are more or fewer cosmic rays hitting the Earth, causing more or fewer clouds, which is causing a warming effect? I've heard some talk about that idea, but never any measurements of cosmic rays increasing or decreasing over time.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
We would expect to see some record lows even during warming. The important point is that there are many more record highs being hit in recent years than record lows, which is exactly what you'd expect if the climate is warming. You can't tell whether the Earth as a whole is warming or cooling based on cherry-picking data.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
This is not about climate, is about temper. The measurement was done in the base now known as Angry Byrd.
Well, if we manage to melt Antartica, we are in hot waters!
Here is the sea rise interactive map. You can choose how much sea level rise and see if you still live on land. I recall melting the whole Antartica would cause a sea rise of 70 meters. I do not know if it includes water thermal dilatation, but I hope it does.
What specific "natural influence" is causing the Earth to warm, and where is the evidence that supports this idea?
There are many natural influences: precession of the earth's axis, precession of the earth's orbit, ocean currents which change due to continental drift, massive volcanic eruptions, meteor impact etc. There is an established record of global temperature variations thousands, if not millions, of years before humans burnt fossil fuels from e.g. O16/O18 isotope ratios. The causes of some are believed to be known and understood but others are not but it is very clear that the climate has fluctuated by itself before humans were on the scene. That is not to say that we should not be very careful about our impact on the environment because we don't know exactly what the effect is but I have yet to see compelling evidence that humans are primarily responsible for the current change but that certainly remains a distinct possibility.
no one with half a brain cell cares whether or not the cause of warming over time is due to burning of fossil fuels or some yet undiscovered natural process...the only important question is whether or not there is anything we as a people could conceivably do to mitigate the environmental changes
Fortunately those of us with more than half a brain cell realize that the two are very closely linked. If the current rise in temperature is driven by natural cycles then stopping the burning of fossil fuel will have little, if any impact. So how do you know what to do to mitigate the impact if we are not certain what is causing it? Reducing fossil fuel use is probably a good idea but when I talk to scientists active in the field of climate research they themselves say that the jury is still out on how much is human driven vs. natural but reducing fossil fuel consumption is probably a good idea while we figure it out.
so in summary shut the fuck up and deal with consensus reality for once
What an enlightened attitude. I suppose a few thousand years ago you would have been arguing that the Earth is flat because that was the consensus? I'm a scientist so actual reality, rather than a group consensus of reality, is what I'm interested in. If you want to convince be I am wrong provide evidence and reasoned argument. Swearing about a consensus will help be form an opinion about you but will do little to persuade me that I'm wrong especially when I've spoken with colleagues in climate research and they say the same: it is not yet clear how much of the recent climate change is due to humans.
Kelvins below freezing would not make any sense. (...) One degree Fahrenheit below freezing is 31 degrees Fahrenheit.
Negative Kelvins would make no sense, but as long as the freezing point is 0 C = 32 F = 273.15 K then one degree Kelvin below freezing would be 272.15 K. Why should it be any different for Kelvins than for Fahrenheit?
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Potatoes and Grains are growing in Greenland quite fine, since a decade or so ... (after 1500 years of coverage). Last time Greenland was green (hence the name) was roughly around 500 AC.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
I haven't personally received compelling evidence that the world is round, made up of atoms and over four billion years old. But since most scientists who have spent their lives studying these fields agree that this is the case, I have no reason to doubt it.
Same with global warming. That the detractors are often right wing and heavily influenced by either god botherers or fossil fuel lobby groups only makes me more comfortable with believing the science.
If you don't think that humans are the cause, as well as identifying the actual cause you also have to explain why the rules of thermodynamics don't apply to a situation where we are adding a gas to the atmosphere that is known to increase heat retention.
Oh, and as it happens even IF you don't think humans are the cause, what is the downside to moving to non-polluting forms of energy before we need to?
And even it it is just local weather that this station is reading, it is the local weather of one massive lump of ice that the world rather needs to stay in solid form, so probably more relevant than, say, the temperature of a desert in Arizona. Unless you live there and quite like the thought of one day being on a beachfront.
There's a good write up on realclimate for anyone interested in what "the scientists" have to say. The write up is by the lead scientist who did the earlier 2009 study. Despite the pile of posts below decrying the "one station" thing, the new study used several lines of evidence. Also both papers were published in Nature, which is not really well known for publishing sloppy statistical papers.
;) a change in the slashdot climate over the last few years, there is much less outright AGW denial on slashdot, my hypothesis is that "teaching the controversy" works against the "teacher" on a site full of amateur and professional nerds. The post with a barrage of well rehearsed talking points is slowly byt surely being replaced with a sort of insolent shrug, almost like as surly teenager's "whatever" when they just lost an argument to a parent, lets hope that in the new year they get over their embarrassment at being duped by amoral lobbyists, drop the defensive behavior, and get angry at the people who deliberately mislead them.
The 2009 study questioned the assumption that WA was neither warming or cooling. This new study extends and refines the first, it has a steeper trend and better confidence levels.
This is good old fashioned, plodding, science that evolved something like this....
Stage 1 - "That's odd" - why is everywhere warming except WA?
Stage 2 - We looked more closely at the numbers for WA, it is warming so the assumption is incorrect.
Stage 3 - We looked again in a different way with cleaner data, we now have a better estimate of how fast it's warming that is at the upper bound of the previous error bars (error bars that IIRC were mercilessly ridiculed by anti-science types as "study shows anything can happen").
Speaking of climate trends, I've personally noticed (as opposed to measured
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
It's a reference to the Western/Eastern Hemisphere, not magnetic or rotational west.
"West Antarctica" is the bit that's south of South America. "East Antarctica" is the bit that south of southern Asia. The dividing line is the Prime Meridian (ie, from Greenwich around the International Date Line, through both poles.)
Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
The error margin is 50%? So the 2.4 was twice what was expected BUT with the margin of error, it actually could be what was expected?
What is satisfying is seeing someone actually included the error margin. The climate models never seem to. The best you can say is that they reflect their assumptions very precisely, you just never know how bad the assumptions are.
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.