[insert your own caption here]
Vancouver Sun/Reuters
ANTARCTICA — Sea levels will rise at varying rates around the world because of a quirk of the earth’s gravity linked to global warming, a leading glaciologist said.
“Everyone thinks sea level rises the same around the world,” David Vaughan, of the British Antarctic Survey, said on Tuesday at the Rothera Base on the Antarctic Peninsula. “But it doesn’t”.
Rises could vary by tens of centimetres from region to region if seas gained by an average of one metre by 2100 as temperatures rise, he said. Worst-affected nations would have to budget billions of dollars more than others on coastal defences.
Vaughan said big ice sheets on Antarctica and on Greenland have a gravitational pull that lifts the seas around them — water levels around Antarctica, for instance, are higher than if the frozen continent were an open ocean.
As ice thaws, Antarctica would get smaller and its gravitational tug would diminish.
UPDATE: With the humorous photo I chose, I may have unintentionally implied that the gravitational effect described is not true. It is and the simplest physics. The likely magnitude and the suggestion of Antarctica melting are the main issues. Here is a paper from MIT that describes Earth’s gravity anomaly and sea level differences. – Anthony
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Oh we all know that Antarctica is wasting away. Every couple of years they have to go out and place new towers for automated weather stations because the disappearing snow causes the old towers to fall over. Antarctic stations deep in the interior now stand dozens of feet above the surface they were built on as the surface snow and ice disappear.
Just today the mercury shot up to a blazing -49F at Amundsen-Scott station at the South Pole. With temperatures like that, all the ice should be gone in only eleventy zillion years!
/sarc
Your mama’s so fat she has to wear wellies in the Sahara.
Regards
Andy
lol @crosspatch. Man this is probably one of the most ridiculous (and DESPERATE) attempt at warning people of the dangers of AGW. Now GRAVITY is the cause, what next, TV SHOWS?!
That is what I call a fat cat!
I’ve found the right song lyrics..
“We’re clutching at straws
We’re still drowning
Clutching at straws”
: The Last Straw, Marillion
Problem is… they probably Believe in AGW
So, if I took the ice tray out of my freezer, I wouldn’t be drawn to eat so much food??
David Vaughn is a clown. Really.
I have proof that David Vaughn is a clown……..
“Clown at airport made to take off plastic handcuffs, a bubble-blowing saxophone and metal bits on his costume.
60 year old, children’s entertainer David Vaughan, aka PC Konk the clown, who dressed in full clown costume was taken to a room and strip-searched by Birmingham airport security after a piece of metal on his costume set off the security alarm.”
Computers predict there is a match.
You do realise that is Cat Porn…and is illegal in 27 states.
Well, if I alter Vaughn to Vaughan, it matches.
A I read this, countries with massive mountains would be mostly affected of a sea level rise. Does that mean I have to take all my money out of my Swiss bank account because Switzerland will be flooded?
What is funny about it is that it says “water levels around Antarctica, for instance, are higher than if the frozen continent were an open ocean.”
Which would seem to imply that it is the landmass itself … the continent … not the freezing part that seems to increase ocean levels … or something.
So how hot does it have to get to melt the continent in addition to the ice?
…. Now that the full gravity of the situation has been exposed ; )
On the BBC news last night there was a reporter with a tape measure reporting from somewhere on the English coast. He was standing on top of a coastal defence wall, some feet above the beach, and playing with his tape measure. Placing the tip on the wall, the highest point of the sea defence, he demonstrated how high the seas might rise (around a metre) due to the advanced effect of glabal warming. “This is how high the sea could rise”, he assured us. I’m surprised he wasn’t deafened by people yelling at the screen, advising the stupid prat to measure the alleged rise in sea level from…sea level, aka the beach still visible at high tide, several feet below the wall!
Much was made of footage of a train running along rails adjacent to a sea wall. There was heavy spray hitting the train. This was treated as if it was an unusual event but not unusual enough to stop the train from running. Maybe reporters needs to visit the North West Coast of England where we often get howling gales blowing in off the Irish sea along with the accompanying storm surges. It’s called British weather and there isn’t anything unusual about it.
This photo was taken at Blackpool when the high tide was being whipped up by a moderate gale force wind. The figures give some perspective although I question taking a young child out fishing on such a day. There is a real risk of a very large rogue wave sweeping them out to sea.
http://www.sxc.hu/photo/742427
During a real blower the waves are much higher and where the man and boy are sitting can flood, especially during an exceptional high tide (spring tide) driven by gale force winds. I don’t photograph storms like this because the wind can gust to 90-100mph, hard enough to blow double decker trams weighing several tons over onto their sides and lift roofs from buildings.
Weather like this is not unusual and has been going on for a very long time. It isn’t caused by global warming. Nor is the sea level rising in this part of the world. I’d know because I live a few minutes walk from the beach in a small coastal village and very close to a river estuary. Storm surges are a fact of life and an act of nature. We protect ourselves against them and no amount of carbon cutback will stop them. So where’s the beef?
All,
What is said by David Vaughan is a scientific fact, already found out 50 years ago… Has nothing to do in itself with global warming, but with gravity changes.
Huge land based ice sheets attract water molecules, which pile up against their coast. IF (and only if) the ice sheet (3,000 m high at Greenland) melts, the water pile fades away, causing a sea level sink around the melting ice sheet and a sea level rise farther away. The no level change point is about 6,000 km from the ice sheet away. That means that if Greenland melts completely, Florida will see a significant sea level drop (!) and Amsterdam a modest drop, while the SH will see a significant rise. The opposite happens if the WAIS should melt…
REPLY: Yes I know it is a fact, I was just having a little fun with the imagery. Such sea level variances are well documented and measurable today via satellite sounders, albeit small.- Anthony
Re: UK Sceptic: I saw the same bulletin; it was a major piece, and it was the biggest collection of lies and distortions as I have seen. At one point the reporter (over pictures of flooding in tuvalu) said “increasing temperatures driven by man-made CO2 are causing sea levels to rise around the world”. I don’t need to point out here how many factual inaccuracies and massive assumptions he managed to squeeze into such a short sentence.
Often I see on web sites like this one that ‘surely this or that fact or event is the last nail in the coffin of AGW’, but such things rarely get an airing in the mainstream media, where AGW is more certain and urgent than ever.
Ferdinand is right.
Brian Johnson, amongst others…, I used to think myself silly to think people at WUWT would dispute gravity if it was mentioned at the same time as AGW – but now we see truth is far stranger than fiction…
“water levels around Antarctica, for instance, are higher than if the frozen continent were an open ocean.”
But…but…bu….you said when the icecaps MELT, the sea level will RISE, and millions will DIE.
This isn’t one of those global warming means it gets colder things is it?
You scientists…such a clever lot.
“Ferdinand Engelbeen (00:44:55)
That means that if Greenland melts completely, Florida will see a significant sea level drop (!) and Amsterdam a modest drop, while the SH will see a significant rise. The opposite happens if the WAIS should melt…”
So if they both melt at the same time, do they cancel everything out, and we end up with no sea level increase?
Nothing to see here…move along, move along. Return to your sea-side homes and villages.
JimB
Re: UK Sceptic (00:30:47) :
One thing they always fail to mention when talking about sea level rises in the south of England is that due to the disappearance of glaciers from Scotland, Scotland is rising and England is sinking. This exaggerates any rise in the south.
The Guardian continues its usual 5 to 6 Alarmist articles per day.
There’s been a spate of extremist alarm stories in the UK Press in the last couple of days.
Greenland ice sheet melting will cause ‘far greater sea level rises’ by 2100 is the gist of it.
All kinds of ridiculous scaremongering contained in the stories as a result.
Key question: how likely is it? What were the measurements used? And is this yet another example of extrapolation of short-term data into runaway models which aren’t based on self-correcting systems?
Look at http://www.independent.co.uk, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news etc and you’ll find the stuff. It’s getting a bit repetitive. Boring. Are their grants up for renewal sometime soon?
I have another theory:
The centrifugal force on the oceans around the equator is much greater than at the poles, causing sea levels to be higher in the tropics.
But if the gravity of the ice sheets causes sea level rise at the poles, then levels rise all over the globe.
Oh dear me, another perpetual motion machine.
Mr Vaughan must have a computer model to tell him this effect is catastrophic bordering on armageddonoid. I can’t believe his numbers, given the masses involved.
“Everyone thinks sea level rises the same around the world,” David Vaughan, of the British Antarctic Survey, said on Tuesday at the Rothera Base on the Antarctic Peninsula. “But it doesn’t”.
AND THEY DON’T
But what we need is a new GRAVITY TAX, encouraging people to relocate to higher altitudes in order to pay less.
Cats would be exempt.
Two friends of mine were once discussing what one called “penal taxation.” The other moaned, “O God, they’re not taxing that now, surely.”
Rhys Jagger:-)
You’ve hit the nail right on the head. It’s a funding issue, 1st April around the corner, local authorities spending their left-over cash on silly schemes ready for the new financial year to start, so to for the AGW scientists. As I have said several times before, if the science is settled, why pay them to keep working?
An entirely reasonable effect, having nothing directly to do with global warming. The interesting question is: are we talking about a change in sea level of millimeters or centimeters or what?
Don’t you need another factor in there to properly apply the monkey wrench?
If you have a mile or two of ice sitting on top of the crust, and the ice melts, the geologic potential is for the crust to rise, which in effect will raise the coastline out of the water in the general vincinity of the landmass (like Greenland).
You do know that the crust floats in the mantle, and the structure of a mountain/island/continent is of a ship floating in the ocean. Part of it is submerged. Ballast. Unload the cargo and it bouys up higher. Load it up with cargo and it sits lower in the water. Glaciate a mountain off and it wants to pop up when the ice has melted.
None of which has anything to do with global warming or cooling caused by CO2. Ice Ages exist, and so do interglacials. They just don’t happen in 10-30 years. Really.