Goodbye Antarctica...
 

that may be, but the core is getting colder with increasing snow fall every year.

source?

January 21, 2008

Antarctica Snowfall Increase

Filed under: Antarctic, Polar —
The ice caps hold a special place in the cold hearts of the global warming advocates who are all too quick to insist that our ice caps are currently melting at an unprecedented rate. We suspect that they will not be particularly thrilled to learn that a paper has just appeared in Geophysical Research Letters entitled “A doubling in snow accumulation in the western Antarctic Peninsula since 1850.” The article is by scientists with the British Antarctic Survey and the Desert Research Institute in Reno, Nevada; the work was funded by the UK Natural Environment Research Council and the U.S. National Science Foundation. In case you think that the Desert Research Institute in Nevada would have little interest in Antarctica, recall from geography classes you’ve had that Antarctica receives little precipitation and is regarded by climatologists as a frozen desert.
We have covered Antarctica many times in past essays, and despite literally thousands of websites claiming that some calamity is occurring in Antarctica related to global warming, we side with the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in this matter. Magazine covers have wonderful pictures of melting of the Antarctic, but IPCC in their 2007 report clearly states “Antarctic sea ice extent continues to show inter-annual variability and localized changes but no statistically significant average trends, consistent with the lack of warming reflected in atmospheric temperatures averaged across the region” (in fact, Antarctic sea ice extent has recently set record highs for both total areal extent as well as total extent anomaly (see here and here)). Furthermore, IPCC tells the world (and we wonder if anyone is listening) “Current global model studies project that the Antarctic ice sheet will remain too cold for widespread surface melting and is expected to gain in mass due to increased snowfall.”

Elizabeth Thomas and her two colleagues begin their article noting “Antarctic precipitation is a difficult parameter to measure directly, primarily because of problems with blowing snow. A recent synthesis of available data suggests no significant change in snowfall across the continent as a whole since the 1950s. However, proxy indicators do suggest an increase in the Peninsula.” They note “that the number of days with precipitation — based on synoptic observations of ‘present weather’ — at Faraday station, in the north-western Peninsula, increased at a rate of 12.4 days/decade between 1950–99. In addition, model data reveal an upward trend in regional precipitation for the period 1980–2004 while satellite altimeter data indicate an increase in elevation in the western Peninsula for 1992–2003, thought to be due to greater snowfall.” Notice that they are talking about more snow and more snow accumulation – in Antarctica.
Thomas et al. analyzed a medium depth ice core drilled at a high accumulation site (Gomez) on the south-western Antarctic Peninsula (73.59°S, 70.36°W, 1400 m) (see map , Figure 1). If you want the details, the core was drilled in January 2007 using an electromechanical, 104 mm diameter drill to a depth of 136 m. As seen in the figure below, the snow accumulation (measured in meters of water equivalent per year, mweq y-1), has as the title of the article suggests, been rising like a rocket. In their own words, the authors state “Annual accumulation has more than doubled in the last 150 years: the mean for 1855–1864 was 0.49 mweq y-1while for 1997–2006 it was 1.10 mweq y-1. At the beginning of the record annual accumulation is relatively stable until about 1930 when it begins to increase steadily. Following a slight reduction in accumulation in the late 1960s, the most rapid increase occurs in the latter part of the record with the mean accumulation rate from the mid-1970s onwards increasing to 0.95 mweq y-1. Note that for the post-1980 period even the lowest annual accumulation values are still greater than the highest accumulation values from the first half of the record (1855–1924).” This huge increase may be unique to the Gomez area, but other cores sites certainly show increases in accumulation as well.

Figure 1. Annual accumulation at Gomez (dashed blue) and running decadal mean accumulation at Gomez (solid blue), Dyer Plateau (red), James Ross Island (black) and ITASE01_05 (green) in meters of water equivalent per year (mweq y-1) between 1850 and 2006 (from Thomas et al., 2008)
So while we’ve heard recent reports about Antarctica losing ice, here we again find evidence to the contrary, and then some, at least in these locations. Not only is there no evidence of melting at the Gomez site, snow is accumulating there at an amazingly high rate. Clearly, this paper adds to the evidence that suggests that we simply, as of yet, do not have a firm grasp on the climate changes and their drivers that are effecting Antarctica, past, present, or, much less, future.
Reference:
Thomas, E. R., G. J. Marshall, and J. R. McConnell, 2008. A doubling in snow accumulation in the western Antarctic Peninsula since 1850. Geophysical Research Leters, 35, L01706, doi:10.1029/2007GL032529.

Originally published in Science Express on 19 May 2005
Science 24 June 2005:
Vol. 308. no. 5730, pp. 1898 - 1901
DOI: 10.1126/science.1110662
Prev | Table of Contents | Next
Reports

Snowfall-Driven Growth in East Antarctic Ice Sheet Mitigates Recent Sea-Level Rise

Curt H. Davis,1* Yonghong Li,1 Joseph R. McConnell,2 Markus M. Frey,3 Edward Hanna4 Satellite radar altimetry measurements indicate that the East Antarctic ice-sheet interior north of 81.6°S increased in mass by 45 ± 7 billion metric tons per year from 1992 to 2003. Comparisons with contemporaneous meteorological model snowfall estimates suggest that the gain in mass was associated with increased precipitation. A gain of this magnitude is enough to slow sea-level rise by 0.12 ± 0.02 millimeters per year.
1 Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Missouri–Columbia, Columbia, MO 65211, USA.
2 Desert Research Institute, University and Community College System of Nevada, Reno, NV 89512, USA.
3 Department of Hydrology and Water Resources, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721, USA.
4 Department of Geography, University of Sheffield, Sheffield S10 2TN, UK.

Thanks for the sources, so I wonder what explains the incongruity.

The final stat is pretty telling though, it talks about slowing the sea level rise but not stopping or reversing it.

shocking
suckingf
uckign

goodbye

we'll miss you, and the penguins

 

there is no incongruity, Antartica is a big fucking place. and the ice is breaking off from the peripherial, more easily affected by weather and water, where as it is getting colder and ice build up in towards the hinterland and the center.

fuck antarctica, did you hear that there's a pregnant MAN???

Antartica would be a pretty cool place to party.....no pun intended.

....
Married 'man' claims to be five months pregnant

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By James Macintyre
Thursday, 27 March 2008

A man who used to be a woman before having gender reassignment surgery claims he is five months pregnant and expecting a baby girl in July.
Thomas Beatie, who is married and from the US state of Oregon, has written an article in the gay magazine Advocate, saying it feels "incredible" to be a "pregnant man". He adds: "Despite the fact that my belly is growing with a new life inside me, I am stable and confident being the man that I am."

what really makes a man? a penis or a womb?

a pair of testicles.

what about one testicle? enough? or half a man?

and is this guy a man? or a cyborg?



i say #2

You say goodbye and I say hello.

if testicles are required, I'm not sure this preggo is actually a man then.

from what I've read, I'm even unsure if (s)he has a penis. it sounds like he was going to, but decided to just get the tits lopped off and have man-juice injections.

so, assuming he has no balls, no peenor and a womb, I'm unsure if he qualifies as man or a convincing tranny.

would someone with some insight into the matter please answer?

well, didnt he won le tours de france a zillion times?

there.

im gonna say the brain


he's lacking a nut or 2. he injects testosterone to compensate.

there.

if that's the case, then there is no way in hell that this d00d is anything special and/or new.

CASE CLOSED??