Just like Archimedes discovered millennia ago, it is well known today that the Arctic ice cap displaces it’s own weight in the water so that when it melts it will not cause a rise in global sea level.
Surprisingly, the National Science Foundation has just figured this out (thanks to someone complaining about it) and has issued a correction to their sea ice page.
The error was first pointed out by commenter Steven Skinner on WUWT on March 25th 2010, who wrote:
The NSF, the U.S. Office of Naval Research, and the Japanese government cooperated in funding a research project called SHEBA (Surface Heat Budget of the Arctic) back in 1997. Considering the big names in funding I was surprised they allowed the conclusion in the last sentence past scientific proof reading before publication. The bit from ‘melting sea ice…’
It’s fixed now, see the BEFORE and AFTER.
WUWT reader Dave Burton, who called NSF on the error and asked for a correction writes in an email to them:
Since the error was on your site for over 6.5 years, misleading readers into believing that melting sea ice contributes to coastal sea level rise, I think it is important that you identify the error on your site, with a footnote which explains what was wrong with it.
I always wondered why I’d get the occasional angry email claiming melting Arctic sea ice would raise sea levels dramatically and “why don’t you get it?” …to which I’d reply “look up the principle of buoyancy”. Now I know.
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Part of the NSF motto is “Where Discoveries Begin.”
It’s also apparently where they end!
WUWT strikes again!
In the great words of Gildna Radner
“Never mind”
http://www.physorg.com/news5619.html
Melting of Floating Ice Will Raise Sea Level
Physical experimentation
Logic
Say levels will rise
WUWT say no rise
who is correct????
I read the above post and started laughing I could only think of:
BEDEVERE: What also floats in water?
VILLAGER #1: Bread!
VILLAGER #2: Apples!
VILLAGER #3: Very small rocks!
VILLAGER #1: Cider!
VILLAGER #2: Uhhh, gravy!
VILLAGER #1: Cherries!
VILLAGER #2: Mud!
VILLAGER #3: Churches — churches!
VILLAGER #2: Lead — lead!
ARTHUR: A duck.
CROWD: Oooh.
BEDEVERE: Exactly! So, logically…,
VILLAGER #1: If… she.. weighs the same as a duck, she’s made of wood.
BEDEVERE: And therefore–?
VILLAGER #1: A witch!
CROWD: A witch! A witch! A witch!
BEDEVERE: We shall use my largest scales!
[yelling]
BEDEVERE: Right, remove the supports!
[whop]
[creak]
CROWD: A witch! A witch!
WITCH: It’s a fair cop.
CROWD: Burn her! Burn her!
[yelling]
BEDEVERE: Who are you who are so wise in the ways of science?
ARTHUR: I am Arthur, King of the Britons.
I got flailed on my guestbook page by one of those types of “don’t you get it???” people. I still don’t get it, I guess. How the NSF could let something like that stand, that is.
If anything, melting sea ice will actaully LOWER sea level….
As Ronald Reagan once said: “It isn’t what they know that is so bad it’s what they know that isn’t true.”
Talking of buoyancy, as silly question for the day, with CO2’s molecular weight around 44 and the air’s 28 shouldn’t even well-mixed CO2 have a rather higher concentration near the ground? I mean, the concentration profile of CO2 according to height cannot be the same as the one for oxygen, can it?
Is this the answer to the riddle wuwt/science:
http://home.comcast.net/~pdnoerd/NoerdlingerBrower.pdf
or perhaps another debate comparable to CO2 snow in antarctic?
JJThoms – that’s land ice. Melting land ice does raise sea level. Melting sea ice doesn’t.
Archimedes died over two millennium ago.
[NOTE: That’s one millennium, two millennia. -REP, the incurably pedantic moderator]
Things like this kind of make you wonder who’s actually writing these scientific papers, doesn’t it?
Interesting …
It says on one image caption that:
Figure 1: A freshwater ice cube floats in a beaker of concentrated saltwater.
What is the concentration ?
Let’s go one step further. How does Ice that formed from seawater, ostensibly relenquishing its salt to the sea in the process, then melt, and dilute the water in any harmful way? Okay, it is months later, but where’s the worry when all that Salt is being added during winter?
Since ice is ever slightly less dense than water, shouldn’t melting sea ice LOWER sea levels (slightly)? — because the volume of the ice will be replaced by a slightly denser fluid. I don’t think Archimedes buoyancy law fully describes what would happen in this scenario…
You can see the effect with simple experiment that can be carried out at home, just pour a gin and tonic, add ice and watch……
I’ve seen a couple of calculations showing that it raises it, but basically the effect is insignificant.
See:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/Sea-level-rise-due-to-floating-ice.html
That phys.org link has a leader that mentions two distinct scenarios but then shows an experiment to address only one.Is there a ‘part two’ somewhere?
I love it when you guys are so adamant when you are wrong.
The NSF statement was only wrong in stating that it was potentially significant (it is too small for that), but it is non-zero, and it isn’t as simple as Archimedes principle.
See also Jenkins and Holland (2007):
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2007/2007GL030784.shtml
But carry on gloating.
@AdderW
According to the PDF that JJThoms linked the density of the salt solution he used for the experiment was 1.197 g/ml. The density of surface sea water according to Wikipedia is 1.025 g/ml, so it looks like the experiment is off by about %10. For additional reference, according to Wikipedia, the Dead Sea as has a density of approximately 1.24 g/ml.
I might be fun to try the same experiment with something similar to sea water.
JJ Thomas, the setting up of experiments which “prove” that it’s worse than we thought, is part and parcel of a fraud being perpetrated.
Sea water salinity in the lower end of the PSU scale is found in, guess where, the Arctic, so a “highly concentrated” saline solution doesn’t reflect the real world at all. Try the following URL for a peak at the real wold: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:WOA05_sea-surf_SAL_AYool.png
Alas, the hyperbole remains.
wsbriggs
try the link to the paper where there are sum simple sums with real world data!
Now they can correct the idiotic premise that melting sea ice has a devastating impact on sea life. It melts every year without any noticeable impact at all.
JJThoms says:
October 10, 2011 at 9:14 am
http://www.physorg.com/news5619.html
Melting of Floating Ice Will Raise Sea Level
Physical experimentation
Logic
Say levels will rise
WUWT say no rise
who is correct????
————————————————–
CAGW logic. The article states that fresh water occupies 2% more then salt water does. I wonder how long do those guys think the water remains un-salted in the ocean? According to the salinity page is all mixed up between 30 and 38 (sea surface salinity)