Rampant Pole + Glacier Melting & Erosion, Sea Rise

Rampant Pole + Glacier Melting & Erosion, Sea Rise
GLOBAL WARMING CREATES AN ISLAND, April 24 An island has separated from mainland Greenland because of global climate change. Full story at http://www.physorg.com/news96655203.html MELTING GREENLAND ICE COULD RAISE OCEAN SEVEN METERS, May 02 The world's oceans could rise by up to seven meters if Greenland's ice cap entirely melts because of global warming, climate scientists said Tuesday. Full story at http://www.physorg.com/news97301758.html NASA RESEARCHER FINDS DAYS OF SNOW MELTING ON THE RISE IN GREENLAND, May 29 In 2006, Greenland experienced more days of melting snow and at higher altitudes than average over the past 18 years, according to a new NASA-funded project using satellite observations. Full story at http://www.physorg.com/news99670345.html NASA FINDS GREENLAND SNOW MELTING HIT RECORD HIGH IN HIGH PLACES, September 25 A new NASA-supported study reports that 2007 marked an overall rise in the melting trend over the entire Greenland ice sheet and, remarkably, melting in high-altitude areas was greater than ever at 150 percent more than average. In fact, the amount of snow that has melted this year over Greenland could cover the surface size of the U.S. more than twice. Full story at http://www.physorg.com/news109952239.html GREENLAND MELT ACCELERATING, ACCORDING TO CU-BOULDER STUDY, December 11 The 2007 melt extent on the Greenland ice sheet broke the 2005 summer melt record by 10 percent, making it the largest ever recorded there since satellite measurements began in 1979, according to a University of Colorado at Boulder climate scientist. Full story at http://www.physorg.com/news116593011.html

:argg: More grimmitude: Earth from Space: Further break-up of Antarctic ice shelf

28 March 2008 This animation, comprised of images acquired by Envisat’s Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar (ASAR), highlights the rapid loss of ice on the Wilkins Ice Shelf from 26 February to 7 March 2008. Between 28 and 29 February, an area of about 400 sq km disintegrated into large and small icebergs within 24 hours. The break-up was preceded by the formation of a new rift appearing first in Envisat ASAR and in Japan’s ALOS PALSAR imagery from July 2007. As a result of the recent collapse, the remaining shelf, which totals about 14 500 sq km, is now only supported by a 6 km strip of ice. This strip is already rifted and during the recent break-up event the rift was connected to previously existing rifts on the shelf. The Wilkins Ice Shelf is a broad plate of floating ice south of South America on the Antarctic Peninsula. Since the ice shelf is already floating, this event will not cause a rise in sea level. However, ice shelves on the Antarctic Peninsula are sandwiched by extraordinarily raising surface air temperatures and a warming ocean, making them important indicators for on-going climate change.

Wilkins Ice Shelf Thousands of years of accumulated and compacted snow on the Antarctic central plateau have formed a mighty ice sheet which flows under gravity towards the coastal plane. Along the coast the ice gradually floats on the sea – to form massive ledges known as ice shelves. But as the temperature has increased, several ice shelves have broken up and disintegrated. Within days of its launch, Envisat captured the disintegration of the Larsen-B ice shelf in Antarctica on 18 March 2002. Scientists estimate Larsen-B had been stable since the last ice age 12 000 years ago. ASAR is able to produce high-quality images of icebergs and ice sheets and is capable of differentiating between different types of ice because it is able to see through clouds and local darkness – conditions often found in polar areas. These ASAR images were acquired as part of ESA’s support to the International Polar Year (IPY) 2007-2008, a large worldwide science programme focused on the Arctic and Antarctic. Matthias Braun from the Center for Remote Sensing of Land Surfaces, Bonn University, and Angelika Humbert from the Institute of Geophysics, Münster University, accessed, processed and analysed these ESA images as part of their daily IPY monitoring activities on the state of the ice sheet. In addition to helping scientists collect an increasing amount of satellite information during IPY, ESA is also making its legacy data available through an extensive Earth Observation data portfolio containing current and historical data (dating back 15 years) from its ERS-1, ERS-2 and Envisat satellites, as well as data collected from a number of non-ESA satellites.

-- Antarctic ice shelf 'hangs by a thread' http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=25064 "British Antarctic Survey has captured dramatic satellite and video images of an Antarctic ice shelf that looks set to be the la-*test*-('") to break out from the Antarctic Peninsula. A large part of the Wilkins Ice Shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula is now supported only by a thin strip of ice hanging between two islands. It is another identifiable impact of climate change on the Antarctic environment." :jolted:

MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICE JET PROPULSION LABORATORY CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION PASADENA, CALIF. 91109 TELEPHONE 818-354-5011 http://www.jpl.nasa.gov Alan Buis 818-354-0474 Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. Alan.buis@jpl.nasa.gov Steve Cole 202-358-0918 NASA Headquarters, Washington Stephen.e.cole@nasa.gov NEWS RELEASE: 2008-051 April 1, 2008 NASA Launches Airborne Study of Arctic Atmosphere, Air Pollution PASADENA, Calif. -- This month, NASA begins the most extensive field campaign ever to investigate the chemistry of the Arctic's lower atmosphere. The mission is poised to help scientists identify how air pollution contributes to climate changes in the Arctic. The recent decline of sea ice is one indication the Arctic is undergoing significant environmental changes related to climate warming. NASA and its partners plan to investigate the atmosphere's role in this climate-sensitive region with the Arctic Research of the Composition of the Troposphere from Aircraft and Satellites (ARCTAS) field campaign. "It's important that we go to the Arctic to understand the atmospheric contribution to warming in a place that's rapidly changing," said Jim Crawford, manager of the Tropospheric Chemistry Program at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "We are in a position to provide the most complete characterization to date for a region that is seldom observed but critical to understanding climate change." The campaign begins this week in Fairbanks, Alaska. NASA's DC-8, P-3 and B-200 aircraft will serve as airborne laboratories for the next three weeks, carrying instruments to measure air pollution gases and aerosols and solar radiation. Of particular interest is the formation of the springtime "arctic haze." The return of sunlight to the Arctic in the spring fuels chemical reactions of pollutants that have accumulated over the winter after traveling long distances from lower latitudes. "The Arctic is a poster child of global change and we don't understand the processes that are driving that rapid change," said Daniel Jacob, an ARCTAS project scientist at Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass. "We need to understand it better and that's why we're going." ARCTAS is NASA's contribution to an international series of Arctic field experiments that is part of the International Polar Year, a two-year event focusing science and education on Earth's remote polar regions. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Department of Energy also are sponsoring research flights from Fairbanks this month in collaboration with NASA. The wealth of data collected also will improve computer models used to study global atmospheric chemistry and climate. This ultimately will provide scientists with a better idea of how pollutants are transported to and around the Arctic and their impact on the environment and climate. "We haven't looked at pollution transport in a comprehensive fashion," said Hanwant Singh, an ARCTAS project scientist at NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif. "We can see Arctic haze coming in but we don't know its composition or how it got there. One goal of ARCTAS is to provide a comprehensive understanding of the aerosol composition, chemistry and climate effects in the Arctic region." The aircraft observations also will help researchers interpret data from NASA satellites orbiting over the Arctic, such as Aura and its Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer instrument, developed and managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.; Terra; and Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observation. Interpreting satellite data can be difficult in the Arctic because of extensive cloud cover, bright reflective surfaces from snow and ice, and cold surface temperatures. For example, it's difficult for researchers to look at satellite data and distinguish between light reflected by clouds and light reflected from white ice cover. "NASA has invested a lot of resources in satellites that can be of value for diagnosing effects of climate change," Jacob said. "Satellites orbit over poles with good coverage and good opportunity, but you really need to have aircraft observations supporting those to make good interpretations of what satellites are telling you." The new airborne view of the Arctic atmosphere combined with satellite data will provide scientists with a better understanding of the atmospheric side of the climate question. "We're interested in data that will help models better characterize the current state of the atmosphere, to set a benchmark for them so we can gain confidence in their ability to predict future warming in the Arctic," Crawford said. A second phase of the ARCTAS campaign, involving JPL scientists using data from the Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer on Aura, takes place this summer from Cold Lake in Alberta, Canada, where flights will focus on measurements of emissions from forest fires. Researchers want to know how the impact of naturally occurring fires in the region compares to the pollution associated with human activity at lower latitudes. Understanding the relative influence of each is important to predictions of the Arctic's future climate. "What we've found before is that there's sometimes a significant amount of ozone produced from these fires and sometimes there's not," said John Worden, an ARCTAS project scientist at JPL. "We need to understand that, because ozone in the Arctic region is a significant greenhouse gas, where it will be involved in part of the warming of the Arctic region. Because the plumes from these fires can stretch across the globe, the ozone and other pollutants they produce such as aerosols and carbon monoxide can have an impact on local pollution in higher latitude cities." For more on ARCTAS on the Web, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/arctas . For more on the Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer on the Web, visit: http://tes.jpl.nasa.gov/ . JPL is managed for NASA by the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. -end-

Great to see this! May 20, 2008 Steve Cole Headquarters, Washington 202-358-0918 stephen.e.cole@nasa.gov RELEASE: 08-132 JOINT NASA-FRENCH SATELLITE TO TRACK TRENDS IN SEA LEVEL, CLIMATE WASHINGTON -- A satellite that will help scientists better monitor and understand rises in global sea level, study the world's ocean circulation and its links to Earth's climate, and improve weather and climate forecasts, is undergoing final preparations for a June 15 launch from California's Vandenberg Air Force Base. The Ocean Surface Topography Mission (OSTM)/Jason 2 is a partnership of NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the French Space Agency Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES) and the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT). The mission will extend into the next decade the continuous record of sea-surface height measurements started in 1992 by the NASA-CNES TOPEX/Poseidon mission and extended by the NASA-CNES Jason 1 mission in 2001. The satellite will continue monitoring trends in sea-level rise, one of the most important consequences and indicators of global climate change. Measurements from TOPEX/Poseidon and Jason 1 have shown that mean sea level has risen by about 0.12 inches a year since 1993, twice the rate estimated from tide gauges in the past century. But 15 years of data are not sufficient to determine long-term trends. "OSTM/Jason 2 will help create the first multi-decadal global record for understanding the vital roles of the ocean in climate change," said OSTM/Jason 2 project scientist Lee-Lueng Fu of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "Data from the new mission will allow us to continue monitoring global sea-level change, a field of study where current predictive models have a large degree of uncertainty." Developed and proven through the joint efforts of NASA and CNES, high-precision ocean altimetry measures the height of the sea surface relative to Earth's center to within about 1.3 inches. These measurements, also known as ocean surface topography, provide information on the speed and direction of ocean currents. Because sea surface height is strongly influenced by the amount of heat in the ocean, it also is an indicator of ocean heat storage in most places. Combining ocean current and heat storage data is key to understanding global climate variations. OSTM/Jason 2 marks the transition of high-precision altimetry data collection to the world's weather and climate forecasting agencies. Scientists soon will be able to forecast how ocean circulation will change from one season to the next and how that circulation is linked to climate change and weather patterns. "What began as an investment by NASA and CNES in research tools for studying the ocean has matured into a proven technique that will now be routinely used by the world's weather and climate agencies to make better forecasts," said Michael Freilich, director of the Earth Science Division in NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. "People in coastal areas will benefit from improved near-real-time data on ocean conditions, while people everywhere will benefit from better seasonal predictions resulting from the increased understanding of Earth system processes enabled by these measurements." OSTM/Jason 2 will ride to space aboard a NASA-provided United Launch Alliance Delta II rocket, entering orbit about six to nine miles below Jason 1's 830-mile-high orbit. OSTM/Jason 2 will use its thrusters to raise itself into the same orbital altitude as Jason 1 and move in close behind its predecessor. The two spacecraft will fly in formation, making nearly simultaneous measurements. For the six to nine months after launch, scientists will verify the instruments are calibrated precisely. OSTM/Jason 2 then will continue Jason 1's former flight path, and Jason 1 will move into a parallel ground track midway between two OSTM/Jason 2 ground tracks. This tandem mission will double the amount of data collected, further improving tide models in coastal and shallow seas, and helping researchers better understand ocean currents and eddies. OSTM/Jason 2's mission is designed to last at least three years. The CNES-provided OSTM/Jason 2 spacecraft carries five primary instruments similar to those on Jason 1. Its main instrument is the CNES-provided Poseidon 3 altimeter. NASA's Advanced Microwave Radiometer measures atmospheric water vapor, which can distort the altimeter measurements. Three location systems combine to precisely measure the satellite's position in orbit: NASA's Laser Retroreflector Array and Global Positioning System payload, and CNES' Doppler Orbitography and Radio-positioning Integrated by Satellite instrument. Instrument improvements since Jason 1 will allow scientists to monitor ocean coastal regions with increased accuracy, nearly 50 percent closer than in the past. Three experimental instruments round out the payload: CNES' Environment Characterization and Modelisation-2 and Time Transfer by Laser Link, and Japan's Light Particle Telescope. JPL manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. After on-orbit spacecraft commissioning, CNES will hand over mission operations and control to NOAA. NOAA and EUMETSAT will generate, archive and distribute data products. For more on OSTM/Jason 2 on the Web, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/ostm -end-

Even the Antarctic winter cannot protect Wilkins Ice Shelf Wilkins Ice Shelf has experienced further break-up with an area of about 160 km² breaking off from 30 May to 31 May 2008. ESA’s Envisat satellite captured the event – the first ever-documented episode to occur in winter. Read more at: http://www.esa.int/esaEO/SEMG58VG3HF_planet_0.html

:jolted:

Will the North Pole Melt this Year?
A new report seems to indicate that the North Pole may melt this year, this is chilling; Uncool Mystery :bawl:

The bad news continues for Antarctica and the glacial poles... Wilkins Ice Shelf hanging by its last thread http://www.esa.int/esaEO/SEM2U5THKHF_planet_0.html

Wilkins Ice Shelf, Antarctica 10 July 2008 The Wilkins Ice Shelf is experiencing further disintegration that is threatening the collapse of the ice bridge connecting the shelf to Charcot Island. Since the connection to the island in the image centre helps to stabilise the ice shelf, it is likely the break-up of the bridge will put the remainder of the ice shelf at risk. This animation, comprised of images acquired by Envisat’s Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar (ASAR) between 30 May and 9 July 2008, shows the break-up event which began on the east (right) rather than the on west (left) like the previous event that occurred last month. By 8 July, a fracture that could open the ice bridge was visible. According to the image acquired on 7 July 2008, Dr Matthias Braun from the Center for Remote Sensing of Land Surfaces at Bonn University estimates the area lost on the Wilkins Ice Shelf during this break-up event is about 1350 km² with a rough estimate of 500 to 700 km² in addition being lost if the bridge to Charcot Island collapses.

Annotated image of 9 July This break-up is puzzling to scientists because it has occurred in the Southern Hemispheric winter and does not have characteristics similar to two earlier events that occurred in 2008, which were comparable to the break-up of the Larsen-A and -B ice shelves. "The scale of rifting in the newly-removed areas seems larger, and the pieces are moving out as large bergs and not toppled, finely-divided ice melange," said Ted Scambos from the National Snow and Ice Data Center who uses ASAR images to track the area. "The persistently low sea ice cover in the area and data from some interesting sources, electronic seal hats seems to suggest that warm water beneath the halocline may be reaching the underside of the Wilkins Ice Shelf and thinning it rapidly - and perhaps reaching the surface, or at least mixing with surface waters." Prof. David Vaughan of the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) said: "Wilkins Ice Shelf is the most recent in a long, and growing, list of ice shelves on the Antarctic Peninsula that are responding to the rapid warming that has occurred in this area over the last fifty years. "Current events are showing that we were being too conservative, when we made the prediction in the early 1990s that Wilkins Ice Shelf would be lost within thirty years - the truth is it is going more quickly than we guessed." The Wilkins Ice Shelf, a broad plate of floating ice south of South America on the Antarctic Peninsula that is connected to Charcot and Latady Islands, had been stable for most of the last century before it began retreating in the 1990s.

Wilkins Ice Shelf in 1992 By studying ESA ERS SAR satellite images since the 1990s, Braun and his colleague Dr Angelika Humbert from the Institute of Geophysics, Münster University, have found the Wilkins Ice Shelf has break-up events with loss of large areas rather than underlying ordinary, continuous calving. For instance, in February 2008 an area of about 400 km² broke off from the Wilkins Ice Shelf, narrowing the ice bridge that connects it to Charcot and Latady Islands down to a 6 km strip. From 30 to 31 May 2008 it experienced further break-up with an area of about 160 km² breaking off, reducing the ice bridge to just 2.7 km. Braun and Humbert are monitoring the ice sheet daily via Envisat acquisitions as part of their contribution to the International Polar Year (IPY) 2007-2008, a large worldwide science programme focused on the Arctic and Antarctic.

Break-ups of Larsen-B and Wilkins ice shelves Satellite data are essential for observing polar regions. Envisat’s ASAR instrument is able to produce high-quality images, even through clouds and darkness. Therefore, it is particularly suited to acquire images over Antarctica during the local winter period where hours of daylight are limited and cloud cover is quite frequent. "ESA provides daily ASAR images that are easily accessible to scientists. It is particularly rewarding for us to see that the Envisat data are essential for scientists to quickly and easily observe these ice-shelf phenomena – a luxury that was not available to the scientific community a few years ago," ESA Envisat Mission Manager Henri Laur said. "ESA is committed to continue monitoring the polar areas with Envisat and in the future with the GMES Sentinel-1 satellite." In an effort to ensure as much SAR data as possible is made available to scientists and polar region projects during IPY, ESA is coordinating with other space agencies worldwide, such as Japan’s JAXA, the Canadian Space Agency and the German and Italian space agencies, to acquire additional SAR data over these areas with their own satellites.

RUSSIAN RESEARCHERS 'RESCUED FROM MELTING ICE FLOE', July 14 Twenty Russian scientists have been rescued from their camp on an ice floe in the Arctic that was melting faster than expected, a spokesman for the expedition told AFP on Monday. Full story at http://www.physorg.com/news135241508.html :grimsanta:

-- Antarctic Climate: Short-Term Spikes, Long-Term Warming Linked to Tropical Pacific http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=26186 "Dramatic year-to-year temperature swings and a century-long warming trend across West Antarctica are linked to conditions in the tropical Pacific Ocean, according to a new analysis of ice cores conducted by scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and the University of Washington (UW). The findings show the connection of the world's coldest continent to global warming, as well as to periodic events such as El Nino."

GERMANS TRY TO SLOW GLACIER MELT WITH GIANT SCREEN, August 14 German researchers trying to slow melting glaciers have set up a large screen in the Swiss Alps that they hope will trap cold air over the icy mass, Johannes Gutenberg University said Thursday. Full story at http://www.physorg.com/news137944631.html Worth a shot, most definitely, but I don't think it'll help much, in the grand scheme of things, even if it keeps the glacier frozen! :grimsanta:

GREENLAND ICE CORE REVEALS HISTORY OF POLLUTION IN THE ARCTIC, August 19 New research, reported this week in the online early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, finds that coal burning, primarily in North America and Europe, contaminated the Arctic and potentially affected human health and ecosystems in and around Earth's polar regions. Full story at http://www.physorg.com/news138373476.html NASA JPL Link to supplement the next story: http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA11002 http://www.spacemart.com/reports/Portrait_Of_A_Warming_Ocean_And_Rising_Sea_Levels_999.html EARTH OBSERVATION Portrait Of A Warming Ocean And Rising Sea Levels Image Credit: NASA/JPL by Staff Writers Pasadena CA (SPX) Aug 15, 2008 Warming water and melting land ice have raised global mean sea level 4.5 centimeters (1.7 inches) from 1993 to 2008. But the rise is by no means uniform. This image, created with sea surface height data from the Topex/Poseidon and Jason-1 satellites, shows exactly where sea level has changed during this time and how quickly these changes have occurred. It's also a road map showing where the ocean currently stores the growing amount of heat it is absorbing from Earth's atmosphere and the heat it receives directly from the Sun. The warmer the water, the higher the sea surface rises. The location of heat in the ocean and its movement around the globe play a pivotal role in Earth's climate. Light blue indicates areas in which sea level has remained relatively constant since 1993. White, red, and yellow are regions where sea levels have risen the most rapidly-up to 10 millimeters per year-and which contain the most heat. Green areas have also risen, but more moderately. Purple and dark blue show where sea levels have dropped, due to cooler water. The dramatic variation in sea surface heights and heat content across the ocean are due to winds, currents and long-term changes in patterns of circulation. From 1993 to 2008, the largest area of rapidly rising sea levels and the grea-*test*-('") concentration of heat has been in the Pacific, which now shows the characteristics of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), a feature that can last 10 to 20 years or even longer. In this "cool" phase, the PDO appears as a horseshoe-shaped pattern of warm water in the Western Pacific reaching from the far north to the Southern Ocean enclosing a large wedge of cool water with low sea surface heights in the eastern Pacific. This ocean/climate phenomenon may be caused by wind-driven Rossby waves. Thousands of kilometers long, these waves move from east to west on either side of the equator changing the distribution of water mass and heat. This image of sea level trend also reveals a significant area of rising sea levels in the North Atlantic where sea levels are usually low. This large pool of rapidly rising warm water is evidence of a major change in ocean circulation. It signals a slow down in the sub-polar gyre, a counter-clockwise system of currents that loop between Ireland, Greenland and Newfoundland. Such a change could have an impact on climate since the sub-polar gyre may be connected in some way to the nearby global thermohaline circulation, commonly known as the global conveyor belt. This is the slow-moving circulation in which water sinks in the North Atlantic at different locations around the sub-polar gyre, spreads south, travels around the globe, and slowly up-wells to the surface before returning around the southern tip of Africa. Then it winds its way through the surface currents in the Atlantic and eventually comes back to the North Atlantic. It is unclear if the weakening of the North Atlantic sub-polar gyre is part of a natural cycle or related to global warming. This image was made possible by the detailed record of sea surface height measurements begun by Topex/Poseidon and continued by Jason-1. The recently launched Ocean Surface Topography Mission on the Jason-2 satellite (OSTM/Jason-2) will soon take over this responsibility from Jason-1. The older satellite will move alongside OSTM/Jason-2 and continue to measure sea surface height on an adjacent ground track for as long as it is in good health. Topex/Poseidon and Jason-1 are joint missions of NASA and the French space agency, CNES. OSTM/Jason-2 is collaboration between NASA; the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; CNES; and the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites. JPL manages the U.S. portion of the missions for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C.

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