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A Hole Opens Up Under Antarctic Glacier -- Big Enough To Fit Two-Thirds of Manhattan (nbcnews.com)
Scientists have discovered an enormous void under an Antarctic glacier, sparking concern that the ice sheet is melting faster than anyone had realized -- and spotlighting the dire threat posed by rising seas to coastal cities around the world, including New York City and Miami. From a report: The cavity under Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica is about six miles long and 1,000 feet deep -- representing the loss of 14 billion tons of ice. It was discovered after an analysis of data collected by Italian and German satellites, as well as NASA's Operation IceBridge, a program in which aircraft equipped with ice-penetrating radar fly over polar regions to study the terrain. The discovery is described in a paper published Jan. 30 in the journal Science Advances. The researchers expected to see significant loss of ice, but the scale of the void came as a shock.
No, puny human, the entire ice shelf is thousands of time larger than the hole that was discovered.
However, the undermining of the ice shelf has advanced more than expected and portends the entire ice shelf, as well as the glaciers behind it melting out to sea.
You are willfully ignorant, and it is clear you never even read the article.
In the article, they explain that the retreat of the glacier and the sinking of the surface are explained by the interior melting. The landscape is changing, and it stands to reason that something is causing these changes. Thanks to ground penetrating radar, we know what.
If you believe the void within the glacier was there the entire time, then you have to explain why the glacier is only retreating now and why the surface has just started sinking. So, I guess I'll be waiting for your publication.
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According to the latest ruleset, this post should be modded as Vorpal Flamebait +5.
No, the melting is caused by an increase in hydrothermal heating. The West Antarctic Rift System, 138 volcanoes known to date, is located right below it.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6014989/
(Pine Island glacier is right beside Thwaites, see map in article)
This is known since 2014:
https://oceanleadership.org/major-west-antarctic-glacier-melting-geothermal-sources/
"representing the loss of 14 billion tons of ice."
So they KNOW for a fact that ice has always been there? Or are we just assuming it was there because we did not find this until now? There are a lot of assumptions going on here... and because of the "Cult of Global Warming" it is now impossible have have responsible discussion.
Was the ice there before? Why is that information not being provided? Oh wait... I get it... just like people of faith are required to accept the existence of their Gods, the GW Cult expects all the deniers to take what they think on faith too!
Science these days is starting to require more faith than many religions.
This post is unintentionally hilarious. It is indeed impossible to have a responsible discussion, when one side of it doesn't even bother to know the facts. If you had read the article you would know that the researchers have been watching the area for years and have recorded an increase in the size of the void. How can you expect to be taken seriously when you can't be bothered to do some basic research?
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
I understand it's hard to grasp the scale of what we're talking about here. Just to give you a sense, the glacier in question has an area of 166,500 km^2 or roughly the same size as the country of Tunisia, and is about 300 meters thick. The area covered by Manhattan is only about 3/100 of 1% of that.
The volume of missing ice represents probably less than 1/500th of the ice in the glacier. It's not the volume lost already that's the concern, it's what the void says about the vastly larger volume of ice in that glacier. Internal melting means that there is some kind of water flow occurring, which could destabilize the entire glacier. That's over 45 gigatons of ice, enough to raise global sea level by over 1/10 of a cm.
Of course that's not very much. If this is the *only* land-based ice sheet or glacier that were unstable, it's not a sea level rise issue; it's equivalent to about one year's contribution of ocean thermal expansion to sea level rise.
This is kind of like finding a crack in an individual Airbus A380 wing; it's not very big compared to the wing's 420 m^2 area, and this is just one wing on one out of hundreds of A380 in service. That doesn't make it a small deal.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Because the ice is a heat sink. Melting ice needs a massive amount of energy. Once its gone, temperatures will rise sharply.
...90% marginal tax rates, and nationalizing all US health care...
The number is 70%, and nobody has ever talked about nationalizing all health care.
The Blaze points out who was talking about 90% rates, and, as a bonus, why they are stupid.
The nationalized healthcare falls under the euphanism "medicare for all". Before you spew your garbage laden nonsense at others, learn to use Google for a second.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
Indeed, it is known about, and contributes about 1% additional warming. It makes very little difference overall.