Posted by: McQ on Wednesday, March 26, 2008 MSNBC breathlessly reports: A vast ice shelf hanging on by a thin strip looks to be the next chunk to break off from the Antarctic Peninsula, the latest sign of global warming’s impact on Earth's southernmost continent.To give you an idea of where this ice shelf is, they include this picture:
Having now planted the horrors of global warming (caused by man) seed, MSNBC continues: The Wilkins Ice Shelf was stable for most of the last century until it began retreating in the 1990s. A previous major breakout occurred there in 1998 when 390 square miles of ice was lost in just a few months.So now that the alarm has been raised that global warming (and man) is the cause of this shocking ice shelf collapse, let's check a couple of other things out. First, it is summer down under (it is now ending even as our spring approaches), so the temperatures are naturally up. And the Antarctic peninsula is the furthest point away from the pole. As you'll see, Wilkins is certainly in a position to be effected by the South Atlantic's winds and relatively warmer currents. But, more importantly, another very probable reason that we see the Wilkins ice sheet collapsing and breaking away has to do with an active volcano. As reported here, "Scientists have just now discovered an active volcano under the Antarctic ice that “creates melt-water that lubricates the base of the ice sheet and increases the flow towards the sea”. That could include the Wilkins Ice Sheet as well (the article cited talks about the Larson A and B sheets).
One of the more probable causes of the ice sheet collapse, then, may be the fact some of them sit astride a chain of volcanic vent islands known as the Seal Nunataks. Make sense? As the volcano vents and the ice sheets are "lubricated" by melt water and move, they could certainly cause other ice sheets to move too, no? So the questions is - could an active volcano with volcanic vents very near the ice sheet in question have such an effect? I'd think it might, but somehow that possible explanation it is missing from the MSNBC article. Meanwhile, check out the temperature trends in the rest of Antarctica as depicted in the next picture.
So while the trend on the Antarctic peninsula is "warmer" notice the temperature trends on the rest of the continent. IceCap gives us some much needed perspective: The [MSNBC] account may be misinterpreted by some as the ice cap or a significant (vast) portion is collapsing. In reality it and all the former shelves that collapsed are small and most near the Antarctic peninsula which sticks well out from Antarctica into the currents and winds of the South Atlantic and lies in a tectonically active region with surface and subsurface active volcanic activity. The vast continent has actually cooled since 1979.Always nicer to have all the facts when considering a 'news' report of this sort, isn't it? ________ Linked by Climate Skeptic, Two-Four, International House of Bacon and Mental Hiccups - Thanks! |
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