Guest post by David Middleton
Deep Bore Into Antarctica Finds Freezing Ice, Not Melting as Expected
Scientists will leave sensors in the hole to better understand the long-term changes in the ice, which may have big implications for global sea level.
By Douglas Fox
PUBLISHED FEBRUARY 16, 2018
Scientists have peered into one of the least-explored swaths of ocean on Earth, a vast region located off the coast of West Antarctica.
[…]
SURPRISING FINDS
The surprises began almost as soon as a camera was lowered into the first borehole, around December 1. The undersides of ice shelves are usually smooth due to gradual melting. But as the camera passed through the bottom of the hole, it showed the underside of the ice adorned with a glittering layer of flat ice crystals—like a jumble of snowflakes—evidence that in this particular place, sea water is actually freezing onto the base of the ice instead of melting it.
“It blew our minds,” says Christina Hulbe, a glaciologist from the University of Otago in New Zealand, who co-led the expedition. The Ross Ice Shelf is considered more stable, at present, than many of West Antarctica’s other floating shelves—and this observation could help explain that: if a few inches of sea water periodically freezes onto the bottom of its ice, this could buffer it from thinning more rapidly.
[…]
“It blew our minds”… Of course it blew their minds. It always blows their minds when it’s not worse than previously expected. The climate science community probably has more blown minds per capita than UC Berkeley did in 1969.
“Now it’s all designed to blow our minds
But our minds won’t really be blown
Like the blow that’ll gitcha when you get your picture
On the cover of the Rollin’ Stone…”
From the days when being a ‘sleb’ was an object of derision…
Whoa! They also did some listen-worthy songs such as “When You’re in Love with a Beautiful Woman”, “A Little Bit More”, and “Sharing the Night Together” and, the tear-jerking “Sylvia’s Mother”.
“Those floating shelves provide a buttress; they “are holding back a very big amount of ice,” says Craig Stevens”
No they are not Craig. Much beyond the point of where the glacial ice enters the water and is driven a little deeper to provide some upward buoyant force (a very tiny amount of which would actually act against the direction of the glacial movement) before it bends back and levels off in the ocean – that statement is just absurdly wrong in the extreme.
Just the fact that pieces of an ice shelf can break off and float away proves they were NOT supplying any force to “buttress” the glacier. If they were then they would just stay there continuing to buttress the glacier. (I don’t understand why anyone keeps persisting with this ridiculous claim that makes zero mechanical sense?)
Actually the shelf ice might be getting thicker even without ice freezing onto the bottom. The shelf is about 200 meters thick of which a bit more than half is ice, the rest is compacted snow. Snow falls on top of the shelf and the increasing pressure turns snow to ice at a depth of about 90-100 meters. The snow accumulation on the Ross shelf is fairly substantial (on the order of 10-20 cm ice-equivalent per year):
https://www.the-cryosphere.net/7/1399/2013/tc-7-1399-2013.pdf
And by the way these “climate scientists” could easily avoid a lot of mental explosions if they took the trouble of studying a little glaciology before rushing off in search of unprecedented worse-than-we-thoughtness.
I cite Griggs & Bamber (2011): Antarctic ice-shelf thickness from satellite radar altimetry. Journal of Glaciology 47:485-498:
“Marine ice is widespread beneath the ice shelves and is formed when water at the surface freezing point melts the underside of the ice shelf. The resulting meltwater sets up a thermohaline circulation where cold, buoyant water comes into contact with the ice-shelf bottom and freezes onto it to form porous marine ice with trapped interstitial sea water. Marine ice can be formed in stripes aligned with fast flow from outlet glaciers and has been shown to extend from close to the grounding line right to the ice front on the Larsen C ice shelf (Holland and others, 2009). The transition from meteoric ice to denser marine ice can often form the last return recorded by RES, so care must be taken to ensure that airborne ice thickness measurements capture the full ice thickness and not just the meteoric layer.”
Sounds very plausible. More snow on ice shelves and in all other cold places would explain why SLR is just refusing to show any sign of a faster rate in a time of “highest global temperature ever recorded”.
“And by the way these “climate scientists” could easily avoid a lot of mental explosions if they took the trouble of studying a little glaciology”
They are in fact glaciologists, not climate scientists.
Nick I sure wished you were on our side cause you are a stickler for facts. So i am so confused as to why you still believe in AGW?
Remarkably ignorant glaciologists then.
Once again skeptics are proven right and alarmists shown to be wrong.
Where do they expect the heat for melting ice shelf comes from? gulf stream? An ocean of water at close to freezing temperature?
“It blew our minds” — I’m filing this under Great Moments In Settled Science.
Did I miss the part where Al Gore is quoting Michael Mann stating this is EXACTLY what we should expect with fossil-fuel caused climate change?
Shouldn’t Mann be the one quoting Gore given that, between the two of them, Gore was actually handed a Nobel prize with his name on it?
Let’s be clear… a Nobel Peace Prize. Which is a political award, i.e. the recipient needs to be politically correct with the Leftist crowd on the Oslo Norway award committee. (A very different committee from the other committees in Stockholm, which award real Nobel’s.).
Whic is why even if Donald Trump solved the Palestinian State issues and brought peace to the region, and brought an end to Korean peninsula nuclear problem… the Leftists in Norway would never allow Trump to get the medal.
You are viewing two of the most despicable, corrupt liars ever to walk on earth.
Oh dear. This is what happens when people who have no idea about the environment study it. As a child I have watched how the sea turns into a thick soup during winter and over several days it can freeze solid. And after a few weeks you can travel for miles on the ice (hundreds of miles in some parts of the winter though I never went more than a Km or two from shore). These scientists obviously think ice forms from snow on land and that it only ever melts in the sea….big face palm moment!
She blew my nose and then she blew my mind.
“This machine generated a powerful jet of hot water, which they used to melt two narrow holes, each a few inches across, more than 1,100 feet down to the bottom of the ice. They then lowered cameras and other instruments through the holes, into the waters below. In doing so, they hoped to answer a question of worldwide importance: just how secure is the ice of West Antarctica?”
Yikes! Imagine the enthalpy required to melt these holes! Imagine this ice melt not corrupting the results of this experiment.
Imagine what powered this machine. Was it nuclear powered? Wind powered? I know, it must have been solar powered! That twin engine ski plan must have been plenty busy.
“It blew our minds”. Yeah, cognitive dissonance will do that, when ideology bumps up against cold, hard reality. They might want to prepare for a lot of that.
Yes, the “mind-blowing” stuff is, well, empty-headed. But the result is surprising. It doesn’t have anything to do with AGW. The only way that ice could be freezing at the bottom is if latent heat is being removed and taken somewhere else. But where and how? It can’t be advected with the water as sensible heat, because the water is above freezing. It could be conducted through the ice above, but if the ice is deep (1100 feet was mentioned) that is a very resistive pathway. If there is an upflux of heat, it would reflect conditions thousands of years ago. Maybe from glacial times.
The sea water is probably colder than 0C . There is some heat loss to the ice but the main reason the water freezes is because the ice surface provides a bonding point which allows the H2O to separate from its salt component.
Yes, the Sea-water in Antarctica is almost always 1-2 degrees below zero. Which means that changes in salinity (e. g. from melted ice) can induce freezing.
By the way I once saw something rather amazing (though not exactly mind-blowing) in the Antarctic. It was a dead calm (very unusual there) and it was snowing lightly. The snow collected on the sea-surface without melting! The sea-water was below freezing and the snow floated on the surface. Of course the moment there was a little wind ruffling the surface the snow disappeared abruptly.
Sea ice can create concentrated brine as it freezes then find a crack to leak down into the sea water creating its own tunnel called a brinicle on its way down. It then can freeze everything it touches as it spreads out on the bottom.
“Which means that changes in salinity (e. g. from melted ice) can induce freezing.”
It could. But there is still the problem of removing the latent heat. To induce freezing, the salinity would have to drop. But freezing then increases salinity, so that can’t go far.
This is common. When the sea starts to freeze it gets really thick like a slushie. It freezes from the surface downwards as 4 degC water is heaviest. The waves no longer make it to shore when this happens and apart from a small heave the surface becomes quiet and eventually freezes solid. So snow can land on the surface of this thick slush. Once it freezes solid the process works its way downwards and the ice becomes thicker. Anyone who has lived in regions where the sea freezes over solid in winter will have observed this process multiple times. Only researchers with no hands-on knowledge of the areas they study would not know these basic facts of life in hash northern or southern climates.
Sea ice forms by first making a floating layer of Frazil Ice, which is a collection of loose, randomly oriented needle-shaped ice crystals in water. It resembles a soupy slush and has the appearance of being slightly oily when seen on the surface of water. It sporadically forms in open, turbulent, supercooled water, which means that it usually forms in rivers, lakes and oceans, on clear nights when the weather is colder, and air temperature reaches −6 °C (21 °F) or lower. Frazil ice is the first stage in the formation of sea ice. As it forms to solid ice it rids itself of most salinity through brine dropping out the bottom, and any new snow or melt that happens on top is fresh water/ice.
Maybe a lesson here in making fresh cold water out of ocean water, just using the cold of winter. Actually, some localities use cold lake water, or could be melting ice water, to air condition large buildings in large cities. Ingenuity at its best.
Nick writes
I’m not sure why you see this as a problem, Nick? If the ocean currents can bring energy to melt, then they can equally take it away too. Oh wait, I can see the problem now. That means something is cooling and that’s not in the memo.
I bet I know what the models would have “projected”.
“If the ocean currents can bring energy to melt, then they can equally take it away too.”
No, they can’t. By 2LoT the only way latent heat can be removed is by being transferred to somewhere colder. That cannot be ocean water, which must be above freezing.
Seawater generally freezes at −2 °C (28 °F).
“It freezes from the surface downwards as 4 degC water is heaviest.”
I don’t know how many times this has been said before: THIS ONLY APPLIES TO FRESH WATER. SALT WATER BECOMES DENSER UNTIL IT FREEZES.
“No, they can’t.”
Yes they can and they do. The freezing point is pressure dependent. When the freshened (from basal melting) water moves seawards it also rises (since the thickness of the shelf decreases seawards). It then becomes supercooled and crystallizes into frazil ice, which being less dense than water rises and attaches to the bottom of the shelf ice. This marine ice can in some case become as much as a few hundred meters thick.
This is a well understood and well-studied process, so it is remarkable that glaciologists should find it “mind-blowing”.
A few references:
Bombosch, A. and A. Jenkins. 1995. Modeling the formation and deposition of frazil ice beneath Filchner–Ronne Ice Shelf. J. Geophys. Res., 100(C4), 6983–6992.
Engelhardt, H. and J. Determann. 1987. Borehole evidence for a thick layer of basal ice in the central Ronne Ice Shelf. Nature, 327(6120), 318–319.
Fricker, H.A., S. Popov, I. Allison and N. Young. 2001. Distribution of marine ice under the Amery Ice Shelf, East Antarctica. Geophys. Res. Lett., 28(11), 2241–2244
Holland, P.R., H.F.J. Corr, D.G. Vaughan, A. Jenkins and P. Skvarca. 2009. Marine ice in Larsen Ice Shelf. Geophys. Res. Lett.,36(11), L11604. (10.1029/2009GL038162.)
Oerter, H. et al. 1992. Evidence for basal marine ice in the Filchner–Ronne Ice Shelf. Nature, 358(6385), 399–401.
“from basal melting”
But the heading here says it is freezing, not melting.
What you are describing here is a local redistribution process under the ice. The LH from freezing is not transported away (from the undersea environment), it just is balanced by the melting of an equivalent amount of ice elsewhere.
Nick writes
Or simply somewhere else. If a cold current is flowing past, then some of the water that is on the edge of freezing freezes and the water that is no longer “on the edge” continues to flow away.
“the water that is no longer “on the edge” continues to flow away”
But it can’t carry the heat, because it is warmer. The heat can’t transfer from the freezing site to it. It can only go into the ice.
Nick writes
But that’s the point. It can carry the latent heat away because its…moving. And more cold water comes in behind it to continue the freezing.
Put it this way, what do you think is happening when ice crystals are seen to be forming on the underside of the ice?
“Put it this way, what do you think is happening when ice crystals are seen to be forming on the underside of the ice?”
The only way that can happen is if the LH released on freezing diffuses down a temperature gradient (to colder). And that can’t be into the liquid, which is warmer. It has to diffuse into the ice, and ultimately to the air above. That is why I raised the point about the long path and time constant – 3100 years. Only a very small flux can pass that way. And if the diffusion of heat from the warmer circulating liquid to the cold freezing zone is higher, it can’t freeze.
That is why I said above that there is a limit on how thick ice over water can get, and it is usually small. The only way you can get net heat flow away from the freezing front is to have a very small diffusion in from the liquid, and higher diffusion into the ice. That means (with thick ice) the liquid has a very small temp gradient, which means a large region at very close to freezing temperature. That means very little motion, else heat will be brought in by advection.
Nick you are a remarkable person. You have a good grasp of basic physics but when required by your faith you can be utterly obtuse. A classical Orwellian “doublethinker”.
What is happening is exactly the same as when wet air rises. The enthalpy is converted into energy of position. The main difference is that in this case the “snow” is less dense than the surrounding medium, so it “falls” upwards.
“The main difference is that in this case the “snow” is less dense than the surrounding medium, so it “falls” upwards.”
No. Snow forms when the air is below freezing, so the air is the sink for LH. There is no corresponding sink in liquid water. Freezing can only occur at the ice surface.
Remind me again why it cant be absorbed by the colder water flowing past it?
Remind me again why the ice is colder than the (sea) water?
“Freezing can only occur at the ice surface.”
I see that you have never encountered frazil ice. It forms throughout a supercooled water body.
tty,
“I see that you have never encountered frazil ice.”
We rarely encounter any kind of ice here. But wiki tells me that
” It sporadically forms in open, turbulent, supercooled water, which means that it usually forms in rivers, lakes and oceans, on clear nights when the weather is colder, and air temperature reaches −6 °C (21 °F) or lower”
Cold air is the heat sink for LH; supercooled water forms temporarily and turbulence allows the actual condensation to occur at depth. Under the Ross shelf, there is no exposure to cold air, and no turbulence.
TTTM,
“:Remind me again why the ice is colder than the (sea) water?”
Because if the water was colder, it would be ice.
Because if the water was colder, it would be ice.
It is becoming ice. Its obviously very close to being ice. Some of it can be ice. If it were true the primary path for the latent heat to escape was through the layer of ice above, then you’d expect that ice to thicken so as to maximize energy flow upwards but instead the ice that’s forming is described as forming crystals which tells me they’re forming while maximizing their exposure to the cold water.
Nick, in this case the water supercools by rising. Ever hear of energy of position? Lapse rate?
Though I don’t know why I try explaining physics to you, it seems a hopeless task.
Marine ice freezing to the bottom of shelf ice is a well-known phenomenon, and has now been shown to occur under the Ross shelf as well as the Larsen, Filchner, Ronne and Amery shelf. But Nick Stokes knows that it just can’t happen.
” If there is an upflux of heat, ”
Not IF. There is an upflux of heat.
In this place the air is colder than the sea, and has been for millennia, even before the ice shelf grew. The gradient is there
and there will be upflux of heat until the whole thin turns to ice right to the bottom. The only thing that can, and will, contradict this growing downward movement of the ice is the buoyancy force.
“resistive path”. Heat, just like electricity, just fellow the least resistive pathway. Conductivity add up, resistivity don’t. Ice shelves are not pure homogenous flat heat armor. Lots of cracks
“The only thing that can, and will, contradict this growing downward movement of the ice is the buoyancy force.”
The main contradiction is the thermal resistance. Heat is brought in by seawater advection below, and leaves by conduction through the ice. At some ice thickness, these balance. That’s why Arctic sea ice, even where it is frozen all year, only grows to a few metres thick, and why the thickest is in shallow water near Greenland, where the circulation of sea water is more limited.
“Heat is brought in by seawater advection below”, for sure, but also by formation of ice.
Obviously, the fact that the ice shelf exist all year round means that seawater is not able to provide heat to melt it. No surprise: it is already at close to freezing temperature, so it just cannot melt ice. Only in summer can the water absorb sun heat and turn it to ice to melt it. This need the wind to break the ice and expose the sea, and enough sun to heat it and keep it from freezing under the wind cooling effect. Won’t happen underwater.
“and leaves by conduction through the ice.”
You think it is an insulator? Well, easy to check , and … surprise!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_thermal_conductivities
Actually, ice conduct heat 3x more than water.
This make me think of the way water drop will grow or not, depending on the size. Big one will grow while in the very same condition small will vanish into vapor.
Same for ice. Small chunks will be destroyed, surrounded by water heated by the sun bringing more heat that they can evacuate in air. At the very same time, in the very same condition, big chunks will grow.
“ice conduct heat 3x more than water”
Yes, but water is mobile. The thermal diffusivity of ice is 1.57e-6 m^2/s at -40°C, and over a 400 m path (seems about the depth of ice) that gives a time constant of 3100 years. Inhomogeneity might reduce that.
“surrounded by water heated by the sun bringing more heat”
Doesn’t sound like the environment under the Ross ice shelf. That’s why I say this has nothing to do with AGW. The freezing location is a long way from the atmosphere by any route.
Thermal diffusivity is a measure of thermal inertia, the way the material will soak a thermal shock with its heat capacity. Irrelevant for the bottom of Ross Ice Shelf. May be of some relevance for the top, exposed to varying temperature of the air.
(besides, water still has lower thermal diffusivity, and while its mobility would allow for warmer water to go up and convect heat, it won’t work at the bottom. )
“Irrelevant for the bottom of Ross Ice Shelf”
The relevance is to the time it takes for a change at the top to have an effect at the bottom, as indicated by the characteristic time of 3100 years. It is a measure of the insulating effect of the ice on the dynamics of change.
It shows that this bottom freezing has nothing to do with AGW, either way. It is separated by hundreds of metres of insulating ice from the air, and hundreds of km of stagnant sub-ice seawater from the open sea. Only very slow external processes can affect it, with much delay.
“The relevance is to the time it takes for a change at the top to have an effect at the bottom”
Oh, if you meant this way, that is, it would take ~3000 y for a thermal shock in air temperature to propagate down, then I have to agree (however, if there is warming, then the ice will just melt from the top and buoyancy will move it upward faster than it would take heat to do the trick. Ice can melt several mm a day. Just need 334 kJ per kg (~1.1 mm of ice over 1m²). The equivalent of 10 W for 10 hours, )
“It shows that this bottom freezing has nothing to do with AGW, either way […] Only very slow external processes can affect it, with much delay.”
I agree (except the “insulating ice” part. Ice is not insulator). Linking ice shelf melting from below (if any) with climate change is just silly in the first place. It is still an interesting piece of science
supercooled water:
Gary Pearse on February 25, 2018 at 7:41 am
Nick the latent heat is trapped within the ice because if the ice then melts the latent heat then gets trapped in the water and if the water then vapourizes the latent heat gets trapped in the H2O molecules in the air. The real controversy in AGW is where does this latent heat go when the clouds drop the rain back to the surface. I contend that it goes into the water again which then starts the latent heat cycle all over again. what a lot of meteorologists get wrong is that when the oceans evaporate they forget that the atmosphere as well as the ocean water itself gets cooler. The atmosphere gets a little cooler because of the heat needed to force the H2O molecules into the atmosphere. It takes energy to do this. There is no free ride in physics. Thus evaporation is a cooling process all the way around. Dont forget until the energy leaves for outer space it doesnt just disappear. Thus when the atmosphere cools a little from evaporation, that would overwhelm any radiation of heat caused by greenhouse gases. Thereason why the atmosphere doesnt start freezing is that evaporation will only happen when the temperature is warm enough. So in essense it is like a massive HVAC setup where the power is provided by the sunlight. Because only half of the earth gets sunlight at any one time the different evaporation regimes cause pressure differentials which cause winds to blow and thus air circulation and heat differentials around the globe. AGW got it wrong when they thought that CO2 IR trapping was causing an increase in temperature and that the clouds of H2O would make it worse for trapping heat because H2) molecules trap 10 times as much heat as CO2 molecules. This is proven by examining the IR absorption bands of the 2 molecules. The reason why the H2O molecules dont trap the IR heat to any major extent is because the large amount of latent heat they are already carrying. so in effect vapourization of water from the oceans act as a cooling effect not as a warming effect. Even Battisti recognized this in one of his studies a couple of years ago when he studied the LIA and the last 1000 years of climate. Now Battisti is trying to say that AGW is caused by incoming solar radiation which is increased (he says) by a decreasing albedo effect. He says that the decreased albedo effect is caused by the increased moistening of the atmosphere (more clouds) and by the reduction of snow and ice because of temporary global warming. His use of the words temporary actually means decades. He says that eventually the increased CO2 causes the warming but then the earth settles down into a new equilbrium and the effects of IR absorption are then vastly outweighed by the decreased albedo. Of course this is all bullshit as you cant have clouds warming and cooling at the same time. They either warm the atmosphere or they cool it or they do nothing. Noone says they do nothing therefore Battisti is trying to have it both ways.
When evidence is found that refutes one’s fervently held Faith, minds are blown.
Did anyone think to try some ice fishing after they were done taking photos?
An interesting observation. The article says that this research was conducted near the middle of the Ross ice shelf. There are no volcanoes in that area, but there is a large cluster of them and a large heat flux at the extreme southeastern edge of it. They really should fly over there and repeat the procedure to see if they get the same results.
The volcanoes are right beneath the areas of McMurdo and Scott Base.
Another area that could be worthwhile researching is west of where this research was conducted (assuming they were in the middle of the ice shelf). There is a large geothermal heat flux beneath the heads of the glaciers feeding the Ross ice shelf, but it looks like the topography in that area drains southwest of Siple Dome. That would possibly channel sub-glacial melt water to the west of Roosevelt Island. Where this research was conducted is well east of there. The glaciers northeast of Siple Dome may not be subject to the same geothermal effect. So another good point to do this research might be between Roosevelt Island and the mainland.
Ice thickening? On Antartica, in December? That can’t be right! Noooooooooooooo.
It is Summertime overthere!
From the NatGeo article:
“The Ross Ice Shelf “has come and gone probably many times in the last million years,” says Scherer. It likely collapsed during a warm period 400,000 years ago. But he believes it could also have collapsed as recently as 120,000 years ago, the last time that temperatures were about as warm as they are today.”
When it happened then, it was a natural event. We are lead to believe that when it happens again, it will be a human-caused disaster! The simpler explanation is that the same natural forces that caused it in the past are still at work, and will be responsible for the next occurrence? I say the science is settled. Nothing is happening now, that can’t be fully explained by natural phenomena.
That is Fake News. The AND-1B drill-core shows that the last time the Ross shelf-edge was south of McMurdo Sound was during the MIS-31 interglacial for just over 1 million years ago.
Can you post a link to this?
Here:
https://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2007/1047/kp/kp07/of2007-1047kp07.pdf
And it was a lot warmer than now in the Ross Sea area 120,000 years ago. About 8.5 degrees warmer than now as a matter of fact:
Steig, E. J. et al. Wisconsinan and Holocene climate history from an ice core at Taylor Dome, western Ross Embayment, Antarctica. Geogr. Ann. A Phys. Geogr. 82, 213–235 (2000).
Bingo!
A simpler explanation doesn’t mean it’s right, it’s just simple.
First time I’ve heard an alarmist admit this fact.
Nice the way CAGW propaganda almost always says “collapsed” instead of receded or melted.
Sounds scarier.
Their minds were probably blown in a different sense, well before they completed their studies at university.
Cognitive Dissonance – Example Follows:
“Scientists discovered hard evidence of Ross ice shelf thickening from bottom freezing. It clearly refutes their beliefs that the ice shelf must be thinning. It ‘blows their minds’……”
Man I bet that made a pop.
Is that the BEST you can do? 😎
If memory serves what happens next is the alarmist community go dead quiet on this issue for a time while feverishly working in the background to assimilate the newly discovered natural phenomenon into the church of carbon dioxide. It will inevitably be shown by some grotesquely contorted, hideously mangled festival of abject and risible pseudoscience to be a direct result of anthro co2 and of course much, much worse than anyone had previously anticipated. I say this with a blend of absolute certainty and terminal ennui.
Given that we have been in the process of moving from Sun Cycle 24 to 25 the Solar Physicists have been expecting a move to a colder climate.
Looks like this ice issue may be the first evidence.
Something about blowing your mind and a jumble of snowflakes. The usual from the climate community…zzzzzzz
The lack of current global warming is increasing the frequency of mind blown alarmists. These flaky data shifters should be removed from any government post they currently squat in. Their office should then be cleaned thoroughly before being occupied by a real human.