From the Australian: SEA water under an East Antarctic ice shelf showed no sign of higher temperatures despite fears of a thaw linked to global warming that could bring higher world ocean levels, first tests showed yesterday.
Sensors lowered through three holes drilled in the Fimbul Ice Shelf showed the sea water is still around freezing and not at higher temperatures widely blamed for the break-up of 10 shelves on the Antarctic Peninsula, the most northerly part of the frozen continent in West Antarctica.
“The water under the ice shelf is very close to the freezing point,” Ole Anders Noest of the Norwegian Polar Institute wrote after drilling through the Fimbul, which is between 250m and 400m thick.
“This situation seems to be stable, suggesting that the melting under the ice shelf does not increase,” he wrote of the first drilling cores.
The findings, a rare bit of good news after worrying signs in recent years of polar warming, adds a small bit to a puzzle about how Antarctica is responding to climate change, blamed largely on human use of fossil fuels.
Antarctica holds enough water to raise world sea levels by 57m if it ever all melted, so even tiny changes are a risk for low-lying coasts or cities from Beijing to New York.
The Institute said the water under the Fimbul was about -2.05C. Salty water freezes at a slightly lower temperature than fresh water.
And it was slightly icier than estimates in a regional model for Antarctica, head of the Norwegian Polar Institute’s Center for Ice, Climate and Ecosystems, Nalan Koc, said.
“The important thing is that we are now in a position to monitor the water beneath the ice shelf.
“If there is a warming in future we can tell.”
She said data collected could go into a new report by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, due in 2013-14.
The last IPCC report, in 2007, did not include computer models for sea temperature around the Fimbul Ice Shelf.
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From the expedition web site: http://fimbul.npolar.no/en/news/current/Nye_data.html
We observed a roughly 50 meter deep layer of water with temperatures very close to the freezing point, about -2.05 degrees, just beneath the ice shelf. The highest observed temperature was about -1.83 degrees close to the bottom. The temperatures are very similar to temperature data collected by elephant seals in 2008 and by British Antarctic Survey using an autosub below the ice shelf in 2005.
We collected three profiles from the underside of the ice to the seabed at 653 meters below sealevel. No trace of the relatively warm deep water that upwells over the continental slope was found. It will be exciting to see if this is the situation all year round, says Ole Anders Nøst.
For more on how the drilling was done, see this PDF of the method and equipment here
More on the project here
h/t to Michael In Sydney
“This situation seems to be stable, suggesting that the melting under the ice shelf does not increase,” he wrote of the first drilling cores.
Another smoking gun… (or freezing one)
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
Mapou>> Well, the analysis from ars technica is worthless if we do not know how these AO-patterns behaved in the 60s, the 40s and even further back.
That’s why noone really can tell what this all means.
Jesus.
Let’s get the Catlin Dickwads there stat, because I’m sure they will provide the requisite scientific data.
It seems like researchers are followed by a parasitic flock of press release writers and journalists, like pilotfish on whales.
Jim, too. (15:26:53) : “Who keeps funding these people?”
Lots of tax money involved, but foundations are busy at it, as well – such as the Rockefeller Brothers Fund:
http://www.rbf.org/grantsdatabase/grantsdatabase_list.htm?page_num=4&from_year=2003&from_month=1&to_year=2009&to_month=12&program=1897&goal=15774&amount=200000|300000,300000|1
Remember the wordwide “380” campaign? Funded mainly by the Rockefellers…
…a parasitic flock of press release writers and journalists, like pilotfish on whales.
Should be “like remoras on sharks,” Dirk. Pilotfish are free-swimming.
I’ll refrain from making inappropriate references to everything mentioned (except whales) are scavengers.
Ooops…
Ron Dean (18:35:09) :….’However, this article says they took readings at various depths. Sea water in particular seems very good at forming thermoclines, I suppose due to currents and tides, so their measurements seem valid to me’
Do we know about ocean cycles and/or variations in currents in that part of the world?
Or at least know them as well (or poorly) as we know and understand the cycles in other oceans.
The information they collect may be good quality, but how could we know how long we have to measure to cover a full cycle?
How could we then tell if the first cycle was normal (or within normal variation)?
Apparently the link I provided (at 23:41:16) was too long, or something – so, instead – and in case anyone’s interested in following (some of) the money – go to http://www.rbf.org/grantsdatabase/ first –
=> “Search for Grants”
=> “Program” /choose “Sustainable Development”
=> “Program Goals” /choose “Combating Global Warming” and “Submit”…
“She said data collected could go into a new report by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, due in 2013-14”
No bloomin’ likely! Has she learnt nothing from Climategate? The Cru will keep it out even if they have to “redefine the meaning of peer review.”
Bill Yarber (18:51:28)
“I believe I recently saw research that said the rate of increase in sea levels was diminishing. Maybe we are headed into a cooling phase and sea levels will begin to fall. Wonder how the AGW crowd will spin that?”
You can see a record in the last couple of decades of both sea level and its differential, rate of change (yearly) at the very useful site climate4you:
http://www.climate4you.com
Click on “oceans” and go to the bottom of the page.
Although there is a pronounced 4 yearly oscillation (what a surprise to find that in the ocean!) there is a distinct downward trend.
I think it is an interesting possibility that rate of change of sea level is a sort of indicator of heat movement into the ocean surface layer, which is in turn a strong hint at the direction of imminent climate change (i.e. downward).
In this context the following link is also interesting:
http://climatesanity.wordpress.com/2009/10/19/sea-level-rise-rate-leads-global-temperature/
kadaka (15:37:10)
They could do, but the problem is getting them back. Underwater navigation systems are quite clever, but not that good – realistically you could predict its resurfacing position somewhere within a couple of hundred metres. Chances of getting it to pop up in the exact same place are minimal. You could use a tethered system, but then your range is limited. A reasonable compromise would be to drop one through the ice and then have it fly (swim) out to the edge of the shelf and pick it up there, but it would be cheaper to just use a bigger battery and fly in and out from the edge in the first place.
And re: the elephant seals thing. It’s a remarkably cost effective way of getting data. The seals are creatures of habit, always returning to the same beaches for breeding every year, and always swimming the same routes out for feeding in the interim, so by tagging the same seals year on year (the tags are disposable – they fall off when the seals moult) you can get an idea of how the temperature and salinity profiles change over time. You would spend literally 100’s of times the amount of cash using a vessel to get the same amount of data, and the data quality is comparable to larger vessel deployed instruments. They should use more of them. But I’m biased. I make them.
Seawater levels ?
Now here is something that I cannot equate. If you fixed a point, say X miles deep and measured it continually by satellite, ( less water too many variables ) we would be talking about differences in fractions of a millimeter over a year, but I read that the level has risen by (Richard 18:28:29) 17cm from 1881-2001 what control could you put on the sea bed fluctuation. Can anyone enlighten me?
I specially want to hear how these measurements were obtained in 1881.
Alan Chappell (05:35:51):
“I specially want to hear how these measurements were obtained in 1881.”
See: http://www.john-daly.com/deadisle/index.htm
This is just raw data. Jim Hansen will be employed to adjust it with data from a pond in Central Park, NYC.
News Flash
“Scientists discover water in Antarctic is cold”
who’d a thunk it?
News Flash
“Scientists discover water below ice cubes is cold”
who’d a thunk it?
Won’t be long before the EPA and the UN get their heads together and put out something about the poor endangered ice worm. We’ll be paying through the nose for their protection from extinction in no time at all. Reminds me of the coral problem but so much worse. Wonder why this hasn’t come up already. Maybe its just that someone hasn’t added them to the latest computer program and interpolated their pending demise from all that CO2.
I guess simple ideas sometimes go right over some people’s heads.
By Definition; the freezing point of a substance is that temperature at which the solid and liquid are in equilibrium. That takes care of the local pressure, impurities in the liquid, and or solid, and darn near anything else.
So regardless of how deep the ice goes below the surface, changing the pressure at the interface; and regardless of the salt/mineral content of the water, the temperature at the liquid/solid interface is the freezing point under those conditions.
And yes the only condition, is that melting of the solid, or freezing of the liquid is not occurring. If the temperature changes from the freezing point, either melting or freezing will occur.
And yes not surprisingly, the water temperature around New Zealand, will not generally be the same as that right at the Antarctic ice shelf, ice/sea interface; but according to an argument in Galileo’s “Dialog on the two World Systems”; every possible temperature between the ice/water interface, and the New Zealand coast, will exist somewhere in between.
Why do people insist on adding chaff to perfectly good wheat.
The Horizontal Bridgeman or “Gradient Freeze” process, is a standard method of growing high purity single crystals from a liquid melt; where a temperature gradient is maintained between the hotter liquid “melt”, and the cooler solid crystal. The temperaqtures are slowly lowered, so the freezing temperature moves along the material as the crystal grows out of the liquid. And any impurities contained in the liquid, tend to concentrate in the liquid, and are expelled from the growing solid, by a “segregation coefficient”, which relates the solubility of the impurity in the solid and liquid.
Exactly that process happens in growing sea ice, and the salt is expelled from the solid phase. And yes high salinity brine pockets may occur inside the bulk; but they are in the liquid phase, not the solid.
What a great idea; use hot water to melt cold ice, so you can then measure the temperature of the melted water in the hole. Is that as big a hole as they could make. They could have laid some charges and blown a much bigger hole; maybe even a football field size hole; Then they would have much more earea of mush to sample and get a good average temperature for the whole pond. I’m sure a ne cm hole is big enough to lower any good thermometer down; and if they don’t screw up the site by artificially intorducing a whole lot of heat, then their data might be meaningful.
And somebody’s tax money paid for this chicanery. Remind me to not donate to that University.
Is there seriously 57m of potential water displacement in Antarctica? Is that disputable? Sorry for amateur hour. Waaaay OT, but I always thought Biblical/ Gilgamesh type floods were far fetched.
ARE YOU SURE? Just look at this:
http://www.lonelyplanetimages.com/images/114073
So it looks like most of the “calving” will be done by elephant seals, when they’re not off collecting data of course.
They’re smarter than we thought.
I think they put data collecting sensors on the seals.
Smokey, (05:46:18)
Thank you for the link, but having spent a very eventful life I am not easy to convince. The world is so big I would think that perhaps one person in a million could begin to understand how big, I once sailed a schooner (47 meters) from New Zealand to Norfolk Island, we passed a underwater active volcano, the following:
(1)We could see the bubble from plus minus 10 km, the ocean was several meters higher over the site.
(2) The water temp. was at 10km 5C higher than 12 km,
(3) The depth of the water was 6 km plus
I think that this event will be happening at several points 24 hours a day,
(4) I have seen waves in the North sea plus 30 meters
(5) Off the Azores (North Atlantic) in a 85,000 ton ship we were driven back 70 km in 12 hours
I offer 5 examples of many, this is only one persons personal experience, but if this is happening somewhere in the world today you cannot convince me that there are instruments that will show even a plus minus 1 meter variation in sea levels, and after all the last time I looked the moon was still up there.
Alan Chappell (10:40:37),
Thanks for that interesting post. You may be interested in this: click