The huge West Antarctic ice sheet would collapse completely if the comparatively small Amundsen Basin is destabilized, scientists of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research find
Local destabilization can cause complete loss of West Antarctica’s ice masses
The huge West Antarctic ice sheet would collapse completely if the comparatively small Amundsen Basin is destabilized, scientists of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research find. A full discharge of ice into the ocean is calculated to yield about 3 meters of sea-level rise. Recent studies indicated that this area of the ice continent is already losing stability, making it the first element in the climate system about to tip. The new publication for the first time shows the inevitable consequence of such an event. According to the computer simulations, a few decades of ocean warming can start an ice loss that continues for centuries or even millennia.
“What we call the eternal ice of Antarctica unfortunately turns out not to be eternal at all,” says Johannes Feldmann, lead author of the study to be published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). “Once the ice masses get perturbed, which is what is happening today, they respond in a non-linear way: there is a relatively sudden breakdown of stability after a long period during which little change can be found.”
“A few decades can kickstart change going on for millennia”
This is what is expressed by the concept of tipping elements: pushed too far, they fall over into another state. This also applies to, for instance, the Amazon rainforest, and the Indian Monsoon system. In parts of Antarctica, the natural ice-flow into the ocean would substantially and permanently increase.
Ocean warming is slowly melting the ice shelves from beneath, those floating extensions of the land ice. Large portions of the West Antarctic ice sheet are grounded on bedrock below sea level and generally slope downwards in an inland direction. Ice loss can make the grounding line retreat, thereby exposing more and more ice to the slightly warmer ocean water – further accelerating the retreat.
“In our simulations 60 years of melting at the presently observed rate are enough to launch a process which is then unstoppable and goes on for thousands of years,” Feldmann says. This would eventually yield at least 3 meters of sea-level rise. “This certainly is a long process,” Feldmann says. “But it’s likely starting right now.”
The greenhouse-gas emission factor
“So far we lack sufficient evidence to tell whether or not the Amundsen ice destabilization is due to greenhouse gases and the resulting global warming,” (Bold by WUWT) says co-author and IPCC sea-level expert Anders Levermann, also from the Potsdam Institute. “But it is clear that further greenhouse-gas emission will heighten the risk of an ice collapse in West Antarctica and more unstoppable sea-level rise.”
“That is not something we have to be afraid of, because it develops slowly,” concludes Levermann. “But it might be something to worry about, because it would destroy our future heritage by consuming the cities we live in – unless we reduce carbon emission quickly.”
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Article: Feldmann, J., Levermann, A. (2015): Collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet after local destabilization of the Amundsen Basin. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS, Online Early Edition) [DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1512482112]
Weblink to the article once it is published: http://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1512482112
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http://www.ospo.noaa.gov/data/sst/anomaly/2015/anomnight.11.2.2015.gif
This data proves this article is nothing but more AGW propaganda, BS!
Speaking of ice, I need some for my scotch. Thanks for reminding me.
Ice in scotch – you heathen 🙂
Yes, an we wear pants under our trousers.
But but!? Surely the author has played this simulation in his daydreams a thousand times.
In parody:
“…“Once the authors brain ice masses get perturbed, which is what is happening today, they respond in a non-linear way: there is an irreversible breakdown of stability…”
How can people get so worked up over the possibility that an ice sheet in Antarctica “might” become unstable and “collapse”. It’s not like there is anything we can do about it! And why use the term ” collapse”?
For some reason, describing something that is going to take thousands of years to happen as a “collapse” seems a trifle dishonest.
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Going that far into the future with your predictions assures you of going to your grave believing that you are correct in your modelings. Apparently there is a market for millennial meanderings on the morrow.
Shoot! make that mental millennial meanderings on the morrow.
Twice corrected – Mental meanderings on the millennial morrow. (invoke poetic license)
(Always avoid alliteration. -mod.)
Acutely accurate allusions.
The difference between ICESat and GRACE is that ICESat measures volume while GRACE measures mass changes. The trends in ice sheet mass derived from these measurements are different.
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2684427
Yes and unfortunately neither measures the ice volume, so both need to be corrected for firn compaction, isostatic adjustments and elastic response of the underlying rocks. All of which are very imperfectly known, with a total uncertainty much larger than the supposed trend.
Trying to measure something that is dependent on effects caused by what you are trying to measure isn’t easy to put things mildly.
I’m willing to sacrifice New York, San Francisco, LA and many other cities… Beam me up Scotty. There is no intelligent life here.
That stuff about the West Antarctic ice sheet (WAIS) is both stupid and uninformed. For your information, that ice sheet is unstable and has been subject to periodic collapses. Scherer et al. (Science July 3, 1998) noted in 1998 that WAIS had collapsed at6 least once during Pleistocene. Ohguci et al in 2006 noted in Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta 70:453 that large amounts of melt water cascaded into the Ross Sea 18,000 years ago, again 10,500 years asgo, again 5,500 years ago and then again 1,500 yers ago. These dates come from analysis of sediments in the Ross sea. Such numerous collapses in the not too distant past are a hint that it could happen again if rising bottom water under the Amundsen Sea keeps undermining it. The bottom water currently rises because land winds keep pushing the cold coastal water out to sea which is then replaced by warmer bottom water. For more info read my book pp. 37 to 46 and E&E 22(8):1067-1083(2011)
No. In the Ross sea area ice has been gradually reterating ever since the last glaciation.
Still doomed, after all these years.
Unbelievable myopia by them. They think that melting will continue for 7000+ years even though we are currently well overdue for the next glacial period. They really think that CO2 rules the whole planet and has completely over-ridden the 2 million year ice age we are only 800,000 years into? Idiots.
This surely has to be a joke? Simulations in to year 9700? Really this is crackpot stuff. Can it get more crazy before COP21 in Paris?
Simulations to the year 9,700 ?
By that time Germany will have been a caliphate for 7,635 years. Wonder what the religion of peace has to say about PIk’s jihad against the global warming which isn’t happening ?
Should that need a sarc or a pained grin?
If it’s possible to lie about the future then this is as good an example as you’ll find. This sort of stuff should be laughed out of town and the authors thrown out of their jobs for repeatedly offering up egregious, evidence-free make-believe.
Several decades ago the comedian and erstwhile Goon Michael Bentine had a television show called “Potty Time” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRL6my1z0sw). I think some of the characters must have moved on to the Potty Institute for Climate Impact Research.
“From the POTSDAM INSTITUTE FOR CLIMATE IMPACT RESEARCH (PIK) comes this gloom and doom scenario, which was likely prepared before they had a chance to read the latest study that suggests things aren’t so bad in Antarctica after all, and that ice mass there is actually gaining according to ICESat data.”
Looks like someone hasn’t bothered to read the articles properly.
“Mass gains of Antarctic Ice Sheet greater than losses” paper:
“We’re essentially in agreement with other studies that show an increase in ice discharge in the Antarctic Peninsula and the Thwaites and Pine Island region of West Antarctica”
Both the Thwaites and Pine Island region being in the Amundsen Sea Embayment:
From above:
“The huge West Antarctic ice sheet would collapse completely if the comparatively small Amundsen Basin is destabilized, scientists of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research find.”
I see no contradiction there
“The huge West Antarctic ice sheet would collapse completely if…”
Halloween is over. Quit trying to scare yourself.
there are hundreds of these “could” papers. they are low on substance and strong on catastrophe.
Jerry Brown thanks you and so do the unions benefiting from high speed rail line construction in that state. Gloom at the South Pole is a key component of waste spending and carbon taxation in California, don’t you know. And its the model public policy funding and spending scheme for other hapless populations.
3m in 10,000 years is 3 centimetres per century. Are we supposed to be scared?
No, Nylo, don’t be silly. We’re supposed to think of the children . . of our children’s children’s children’s children’s children’s children’s children’s children’s children’s children’s children’s children’s children’s children’s children’s children’s children’s children’s children’s children’s children’s children’s children’s children’s children’s children’s children’s children’s children’s children’s children’s children’s children’s children’s children, like the CAGW clan does, unlike the heartless denialists.
Where have all the money gone? Even Nasa have now realised that the ice in Antarctic is increasing not decreasing…..
Mass gains of Antarctic Ice Sheet greater than losses, NASA study reports, phys.org/news/ October 31, 2015
““In our simulations ”
OK…where is the proof that your “simulations” are right? When did computer models become incontrovertible proof?
In Germany the word “simulieren” has also the meaning of cheating…
PIK and models. I wonder what is on TV?