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A Giant, Mysterious Hole Has Opened Up In Antarctica (vice.com)
Scientists are perplexed over a giant hole that has opened up in Antarctica. According to Motherboard, the "gigantic, mysterious hole" is as large as Lake Superior or the state of Maine. From the report: The gigantic, mysterious hole "is quite remarkable," atmospheric physicist Kent Moore, a professor at the University of Toronto's Mississauga campus, told me over the phone. "It looks like you just punched a hole in the ice." Areas of open water surrounded by sea ice, such as this one, are known as polynyas. They form in coastal regions of Antarctica, Moore told me. What's strange here, though, is that this polynya is "deep in the ice pack," he said, and must have formed through other processes that aren't understood. "This is hundreds of kilometers from the ice edge. If we didn't have a satellite, we wouldn't know it was there." (It measured 80,000 km^2 at its peak.) "This is now the second year in a row it's opened after 40 years of not being there," Moore said. (It opened around September 9.) "We're still trying to figure out what's going on."
I second that:
http://stargate.wikia.com/wiki/Battle_of_Antarctica
The Weddell Polynya is reasonably well understood
"The Southern Ocean is strongly stratified. A very cold but relatively fresh water layer covers a much warmer and saltier water mass, thus acting as an insulating layer," explains Prof. Dr. Mojib Latif, head of the Research Division at GEOMAR. Under certain conditions, the warm water of the lower layer can reach the surface and melt the ice. "This is like opening a pressure relief valve - the ocean then releases a surplus of heat to the atmosphere for several consecutive winters until the heat reservoir is exhausted," adds Professor Latif
The Arctic Sea's ice thickness is likely just a few meters, even though the inland ice sheet can be thousands of meters thick.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
That's like saying the bug in this software is probably due to a subroutine.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
For those who use metric, it's a bit less than three standard Belgiums.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Underwater volcanism is my first guess. There is probably a convective current starting from the heated area at sea floor beneath the hole. The heat source was probably always there, but now the temperature of sea water has risen enough that with additional heating it is enough to melt the ice.
Perhaps. I'm a firm believer in the laws of thermodynamics, but I certainly wouldn't declare this as related to AGW. This despite the denialists rushing to declare that people are saying it is, so they can have a strawman to beat up.
And yes folks, we are allowed to speculate. Scientists do this all the time in order to eliminate unlikely candidates for the phenomenon, like the open water being caused by the pancake syrup at iHop.
You are correct that volcanic activity is a good first guess. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... Antarctica is a pretty busy place in that way. A group has claimed to have found 91 previously unknown volcanoes, https://www.engadget.com/2017/... but these have not been confirmed as of yet.
This one is active and confirmed https://www.livescience.com/41... .
Global warming? I seriously doubt it. A problem for humans? Not unless this is the initial bowshots of a nascent super-volcano. Interesting as all hell, and it surely wouldn't hurt to find out the cause.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.