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Is the Ice
of Antarctica Melting?
Many people have cited different things to either
prove that it is melting, or to prove that it is not melting.
4 Ice Zones
I would classify the Antarctic ice into 4 different
zones.
Seasonal Ice
Naturally, in the southern winter, the sea round Antarctica will freeze, and in the summer it will
melt. The actual area that freezes will
vary from year to year, and general trends are difficult to identify.
Floating Ice
Shelves
Closer to the continent there is Ice that does not
melt each year. This ice is being pushed
away from the land by the ice flowing off the continent.
Grounded Ice
Shelves
Then there are the grounded ice shelves. By far the biggest is the Western Ice
shelf. Western
Antarctica is not a continent, but is an archipelago. If there was no ice, it would be islands.
Between and covering these islands there is ice. Between
the islands the ice is resting on the sea bed.
That is, the ice is not floating.
East
Antarctica
The Ice sheet of East Antarctica
is probably the most stable ice in the world.
It is solidly grounded on land, and is 4 kilometres thick in
places. It is slowly building up with
the quite low snow falls, and is also flowing slowly to the sea.
NASA
The American National Aeronautic and Space
Administration can measure the amount of ice in Antarctica
by satellite measurements of the gravity.
Unlike looking at specific areas of surface ice, this method gives an
overall view.
These measurements have been done since 2002. In the 7 years to 2009, there has been a
strong trend. The ice is
disappearing. The average reduction of
ice has been about 150 cubic Kilometres a year (36 cubic miles). A cubic Kilometer is an enormous amount of ice. The total amount of ice in Antarctica
is 30 million cubic Kilometres. So if
the average rate of decline continues, all the ice in Antarctica
will be gone in 200,000 years. This is a
long time.
However, the graph of the decline in amount of ice is
not linear. The rate is
accelerating. The measurements have not
been done for long enough to make meaningful predictions.
One thing we can reasonably guess is that the melting
of the ice will not be a simple extrapolation of what has happened for the last
7 years.
The Arctic ice and the Greenland
ice cap appear to be melting much faster than the Antarctic ice. This means that there is a smaller area of
ice to reflect the sun in the north.
This is causing a strong positive feedback, and the Arctic regions are
warming up rapidly. If this happens in
the south, the ice could melt much faster than it is doing.
Sources
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/20100108_Is_Antarctica_Melting.html
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