Fiber Optics In Antarctica Will Monitor Ice Sheet Melting

sciencehabit writes: Earth is rapidly being wired with fiber-optic cables — inexpensive, flexible strands of silicon dioxide that have revolutionized telecommunications. They've already crisscrossed the planet's oceans, linking every continent but one: Antarctica. Now, fiber optics has arrived at the continent, but to measure ice sheet temperatures rather than carry telecommunication signals. A team of scientists using an innovative fiber-optic cable–based technology has measured temperature changes within and below the ice over 14 months. This technology, they say, offers a powerful new tool to observe and quantify melting at the base of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet.

Comments

WTF, the antarctic gets FO before me?

[Nyder]

Nice, here I live in Seattle, just off of downtown, can't get fiber optics, but hey, whatever. fuckers.

Re:WTF, the antarctic gets FO before me?

[Teresita]

There's a record 7.6 million square miles of ice pack in Antarctica this year, but no, we need to measure it melting.

Re:WTF, the antarctic gets FO before me?

[chmod a x mojo]

Nope, I require science, something you don't seem to have a firm grasp of as of yet. Try taking a few classes, looking at and actually understanding the massive amounts of data available, and after that coming back in a year or three when you actually have a chance at understanding the difference between long and short term trends.

But, if you actually have data proving climate change wrong, for the love of $DIETY publish it in a peer reviewed journal, you will become famous... I won't hold my breath though.

Re:WTF, the antarctic gets FO before me?

[flaming error]

This is +4 informative? Seriously?

For those who can't be bothered to read the summary, this is not about FO communications. Some guys are using the properties of fiber optics and light to figure out the temperature along a length of cable they dropped down a bore shaft to the ocean.

Re:WTF, the antarctic gets FO before me?

[paul.hatchman]

Perhaps you could use your obviously epic google skills to look up the Western Antarctic Ice Sheet. You know the one the article is actually talking about? The one that is shrinking and unstable and could cause sea levels to rise by 1.2 metres? I think that's worth at least keeping an eye on. Don't you?

Re:WTF, the antarctic gets FO before me?

[Anonymous Coward]

Marking a funny post as funny doesn't get the poster any "points" so many times funny posts get marked informative. That or the average /. moderator is a total idiot.
I'll let you decide what is more likely.

Re: WTF, the antarctic gets FO before me?

[Anonymous Coward]

No
http://www.skepticalscience.com/no-warming-in-16-years.htm

Re:WTF, the antarctic gets FO before me?

[dbIII]

Maybe, but that's just a guess isn't it? Perhaps it's a good idea to let scientists take a look at it to understand what is going on instead of attempting to trump reality by some sort of political fiat. Even if some declare the climate has never changed since Genesis there's still a great deal of value for global weather forecasting in monitoring conditions in Antarctica - it's half the reason Scott etc went there a century ago after all.
King Canute's lesson to his court over how political will cannot command nature is very apt. You can shout from the rooftops that nothing is happening but there is some reason why last month was the hottest September in more than a century. Putting on a blindfold is not going to help.

Re:WTF, the antarctic gets FO before me?

[Ichijo]

political will cannot command nature

That's obviously false, as evidenced by the fact that the sun rises earlier when daylight saving time is in effect. If that isn't political will commanding nature, then what is? (In fact, they had to end the trial early in Arizona way back in WWII when they discovered the extra hour of sunlight was scorching the grass.)

Re:WTF, the antarctic gets FO before me?

[Truth_Quark]

NOAA ignores its own satellite records (which it previously claimed were more accurate than surface temperature measurements) to make that claim.

Land based measurements are much more directly related to temperature, than satellites, and don't have the problems of interpreting the MSU readings as temperature, orbital drift, the fact that there have been fewer than three instruments in orbit for much of the time making calibration guesswork, and correcting for what the satellite orbits are passing over.

I would be very surprised if NOAA every claimed that satellite derived near-surface temperatures were more accurate than met stations. Do you have a link to one of the places that they make this claim? (Or did you just make it up yourself, and hope that people would believe you?)

And in what way did they ignore their own satellite records?

The satellite record has shown a slight but real cooling trend for a decade and a half, and a year that has actually been one of the COOLEST on record.

Okay, again you're going to need to provide a source. I know of two groups interpreting satellite data. There's a couple of skeptics at UHA, and their satellite temperatures show this over the last 15 years. As you can see, it shows a warming trend.

The other is by a private company called Remote Sensing Systems. Their data looks like this. A very slight cooling, that I cannot believe would be "real cooling trend", if by real you mean statistically significant.
(The fact that the difference in warming trends spans the difference in the warming trends of the land-based measurements is indicative that the satellite temperatures are in fact, less accurate than land based ones.)

Also, sea level is not rising. That is to say, it isn't rising any faster today than it has for the last couple of hundred years.

If the sea is rising, then it is warming. Sea level rise is caused by thermal expansion and by melting land ice. Both require energy in.

But your claim that it is not accelerating does not have any consensus from the scientific community. Most people would say that it is accelerating. For instance: There is considerable variability in the rate of rise during the twentieth century but there has been a statistically significant acceleration since 1880 and 1900 of 0.009 ± 0.003 mm year2 and 0.009 ± 0.004 mm year2, respectively. - Church and White (2011)

The amount of fudging that NOAA and its NCDC have to accomplish to make this year actually look warm, much less a record, is nothing short of incredible. I mean that word literally: in-credible.

Given your questionable points above, I also question this conclusion. What is the basis of your claim of "fudging". Are you one of these conspiracy theorists who claim that the vast majority of scientists advance their careers by producing papers that claim results that aren't reproducible? Because that is literally in-credible.

Gramling Says What?

[nicoleb_x]

TFA by Carolyn Gramling is a real piece of work. It makes scary claims and then links to articles that make no such claims. I guess that is what staff editors do for us.

Now this pisses me off

[dargaud]

Over a decade ago I submitted a project to carry data in Antarctica by a 1500km fiber for a large project. It was shut down by the Americans because according to the Antarctic Treaty you cannot leave anything in Antarctica permanently. Now the US has this project (how are they gonna get it out of the Ice ?), Ice Cube (which has thousands of detectors under km of ice) and others...

Re: This is not science

[phantomfive]

So in your world testing a hypothesis isn't science?

Strictly speaking, testing a hypothesis is the opposite, it's trying to prove the hypothesis false. The more you fail at disproving, the more likely it is to be correct.