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Antarctic Ice Loss Big Enough To Cause Measurable Shift In Earth's Gravity
An anonymous reader writes: Contrary to what we were sometimes taught in high school physics, the Earth's gravity is not constant. It actually shows slight variations on different parts of the Earth's surface, and the variations correlate with the density of the material on that surface. The European Space Agency has been measuring gravity for four years, mapping these variations and recording the changes those variations have undergone. Its data indicates "a significant decrease [in gravity] in the region of Antarctica where land ice is melting fastest. Further analysis is, of course, planned so that the whole of Antarctica can be taken into account and "the clearest picture yet of the pace of global warming" can be determined on that continent.
The Ice melts and the water physically goes elsewhere. Less stuff, less gravity.
The whole story is. 4 years != climate. Not by anyone's measure. If skeptics tried to debunk AGW on this board with a 4 year trend, everyone would be all over them like white on rice. But 4 years in favor of AGW in the summary? A O K!
The shift is small but the mass loss is real. Last three year average in the measured area has been 185 gigatonnes/year. It has an effect on the gravity, that's clear. The question is how much, and it seems it can actually be measured by instruments. Not anywhere in the world there's a constant loss of this magnitude, and as the trend goes on the change in gravity will also become more distinct.
Ladies and gentlemen, the Gish Gallop.
What conclusions are we supposed to draw from that? Well, other than that you don't know the difference between "land" and "sea".
I'm getting tired of hearing about how all life on Earth will end in a few years unless we vote for just one political party and their pet doomsday cult.
I'm sorry that you are getting tired of this, but in this case you can rejoice! Because nowhere in the article did they state such an absurd line.
There is no point making up quotes to get offended by when you could just comment on the actual story at hand. Your entire post has absolutely nothing to do with measuring the gravitational changes of melting ice.
There is no net change. Local gravity becomes weaker where the ice was and stronger where the melted ice now is.
The whole story is. 4 years != climate. Not by anyone's measure. If skeptics tried to debunk AGW on this board with a 4 year trend, everyone would be all over them like white on rice. But 4 years in favor of AGW in the summary? A O K!
Yes but before the ESA satellite there were the GRACE satellites launched in 2002 that also showed West Antarctica losing ice and Antarctica overall is losing ice at a rate of almost 69 GT/year (graph). So it's more like 12 years of data. Even that is a rather short time period compared to the standard climatological period of 30 years. But the standard climatological variables such as temperature, precipitation and wind are very noisy compared the rate of ice loss so it takes longer to discern a significant trend with them than with ice. So 12 years may be long enough for significance. I'm not sure.
The suggestion that "being big enough to cause a measurable shift in earth's gravity" is something worthy of note is the anti science idiocy. This is not something that matters.
You don't understand. It is politically correct to tie this to global warming.
The article barks at the wrong tree. The cryosphere page at University of Illinois-Champagne shows that we are currently seeing 1.3 million sq. km more sea ice than the average, and the levels have been sharply rising the last few years.
There is a fine balance between trying to increase awareness and being a downright propagandist. Unfortunately, this article doesn't help the cause. This is exactly the kind of thing that make people believe environmentalists are exaggerating and grasping at straws.
Wired: Stop. You are not helping.
Before you go on you really should learn the difference between ice sheets, ice shelves and sea ice. They are not the same thing. Talking about sea ice in response to this article about the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is a non-sequitur.
I'm getting kinda tired of the Global Warming doomsday cult
Good marketing there, mate. The PR professionals of the denialist movement like to throw around words like "cult" or "religion" for the scientific movement that they are trying to attack.
Casting the scientific position as religious attacks it's greatest strength, that it is scientific, and therefore our best guess of truth.
While I don't ignore the fact that man can alter the weather to some degree.
Okay.
I'm getting tired of hearing about how all life on Earth will end in a few years unless we vote for just one political party and their pet doomsday cult.
The article is about ice loss on the Antarctic. It doesn't discuss who you should vote for. It doesn't even assume the reader is in any country or democratic precinct.
Apparently, the sun has nothing to do with climate.
The current warming is not due to the sun. This can be shown because the current warming is occurring more in winter and night, as you would expect from greenhouse warming which slows the rate of heat loss. The sun would warm more when it is shining.
It can also be shown by the cooling of the stratosphere, showing that less heat is reaching the stratosphere from below. The sun would increase the temperature of the whole atmosphere.
But also Solar activity does not correlate with the current warming.
Also, all global warming and ice age events for that last 100 million years were caused by present day American pollution but non-American pollution doesn't do anything....especially is it comes from China and India.
I think that this would be wrong.
Do you have a source?
So just remember, Al Gore has a carbon footprint 10000 times larger than you and is swimming in millions of oil dollars from the Middle East.
I believe that Al Gore is carbon neutral.
I read just the other day that Antarctica has more ice than ever!
I suspect you read that there the sea ice around Antarctica is more than ever. Antarctica has been losing huge volumes of ice for some decades.
The whole story is. 4 years != climate. Not by anyone's measure. If skeptics tried to debunk AGW on this board with a 4 year trend, everyone would be all over them like white on rice. But 4 years in favor of AGW in the summary? A O K!
Not so. The scientific point of view is that the data speak for themselves; different theories try to make sense of the observed data. Theories are never perfect, but we can make theories better by using the scientific method - and this is where the debate invariably breaks down, not because a secretive conspiracy of climate scientists are suppressing facts, but because those suffering from 'skepticemia' are unwilling to accept reality.
Weather is what happens locally, in the short time span - the wind in your hair, the sun on your face - climate is the average of the weather over large areas and long periods of time. So, it is perfectly reasonable to observe that the weather has been unusually cold in Canada this summer, and then say that this goes against the idea of global warming, and the observation requires a theoretical explanation, of course. Climatologists have already given very plausible explanations; the problem is that climate deniers don't want to accept the explanation. But just as it is necessary to consider data that go against the theory, it is also necessary to accept the data that support the theory; hence it is reasonable to state that the loss of icemass in Antarctica supports the theory of global warming.
What I still haven't seen in is just 1 climate model that explains most of the observed current and historical data and doesn't end up concluding that climate change is happening and is caused by human activities. Produce just 1 theory that can stand up the critical efforts of more than a select group of handpicked believers; the truth is that the skeptics are unable to do so, and therefore talk about conspiracies instead. Meanwhile, I think the scientific consensus has moved on, because whether people like it or not, reality keeps happening.
Not exactly and no. When mass is redistributed (due to ice melting, plate tectonics, mantle convection, etc...) the shape of the geoid changes. However the total mass of the Earth is conserved. So if you are far enough away from the Earth to make it indistinguishable from a point mass, Earth's gravity remains constant.
Blowing karma on being pedantic: gravity is by far the weakest force known!
you can eat your tofu if you like. the day you tell me I cant have a hamburger is the day we have a problem
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same