Researchers have concluded that a slight rise in temperature in the Antarctic Peninsula would cause both glacier regression and increased snowfall, however the increase in snowfall would not counteract the glacial regression (Abstract).
Temperatures are currently rising rapidly in the Antarctic Peninsula. Because warmer air holds more moisture, the amount of snowfall has also increased. Some researchers have suggested that this may offset the melting of the glaciers, however this study found that just a small rise in air temperature increased melting so much that even large amounts of extra snowfall could not prevent glacier recession.
The researchers carried out extensive fieldwork on James Ross Island, northern Antarctic Peninsula, to map and analyse the changes to a glacier, which is currently 4km long, over the past 10,000 years. They used a combination of glacier and climate modelling, glacial geology and ice-core data.
“These small glaciers around the edge of the Antarctic Peninsula are likely to contribute most to rising sea levels over the coming decades, because they can respond quickly to climate change”, said Dr Davies, from the Department of Geography at Royal Holloway. “This study is the first to show how glaciers in this vulnerable region are likely to respond to climate change in future. Our findings demonstrate that the melting will increase greatly even with a slight rise in temperature, offsetting any benefits from increased snowfall.”
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 15 2014, @03:22PM
Going to go out on a limb here and predict that the ozone hole will be smaller too with all this warm antarctic weather. Just like it gets bigger when it's colder. Of course others consider the hole to be the one causing the weather changes when it's actually the other way around.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday September 15 2014, @03:45PM
I'm a little confused about the hypothesis. Where I'm sitting right now had a 2 mile tall glacier (or whatever height) just a couple thousand years ago. I always thought the assumption was higher temps mean glacial retreat, always? The glaciers retreated from the great lakes region because it got warmer, not colder or for purely random reasons. It is interesting in an abstract sense that conventional wisdom has been "proven" via detailed simulation applied to some measured historical data.
Ditto the situation with "glacier national park" which soon enough will have no glaciers anymore. I'm sorta trying to motivate myself to get out there before they're gone. Not forever of course, they'll be back very soon geologically speaking, although well after I'm dead. I'm unaware there is any theory for why the glaciers are disappearing from the park other than warming climate other than space alien and volcano eruption nuts.
Getting in at the end of the debate/story can be confusing.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Monday September 15 2014, @05:42PM
Where I'm sitting right now had a 2 mile tall glacier (or whatever height) just a couple thousand years ago... The glaciers retreated from the great lakes region ...
More like 20,000 years ago. [noaa.gov]
I always thought the assumption was higher temps mean glacial retreat, always?
Science doesn't assume.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 15 2014, @04:14PM
Glaciers are interesting.
Note. new post on SoylentNews discussing future of SoylentNews does not allow comments. Hilarity. Please fix. Probably wants us to read the post. lol We come here for the comments not the stories. bwahahaha
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bradley13 on Monday September 15 2014, @04:22PM
The Antarctic peninsula is warming, this is undisputed, but Antarctica is undergoing substantial cooling in the interior [www.unis.no]. The referenced article is for the period from 1960 through 2000. During the first 30 years of that period, there was a slight warming of most of the continent. For the period 1990 to 2000 (see the update at the end of the article) pretty much the entire continent except the peninsula was cooling. This has continued, for example as confirmed by NSIDC in 2010 [nsidc.org]. So, yes, the peninsula is warming, but this is a local climate issue opposite the continent-wide trend.
Amusingly, what people claim is happening in Antarctica is pretty inconsistent. AGW deniers point to today's record levels of sea ice. AGW believers dismiss this and claim that the land ice is decreasing. Both positions are the opposite of what the IPCC says, namely, that the increases in Antarctic ice would follow from global warming, due to increased precipitation in polar regions, i.e., AGW believers should want more ice, deniers less. Meanwhile, NASA says "It is uncertain, however, whether the world's two major ice sheets-Greenland and Antarctica-have been growing or diminishing" [nasa.gov].
tl;dr - yet another paper predicting catastrophe by cherry picking it's data. Yawn...
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by DeathMonkey on Monday September 15 2014, @05:50PM
So the interior af the Antartic is cooling while the coastal regions are warming. You pick this localized interior cooling and imply that it disproves global warming. Then you accuse others of cherry-picking. Nice.
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Tuesday September 16 2014, @03:12AM
You are showing your own bias there. The GP post never said it disproved global warming.
He didn't take sides, he just pointed out that it was amusing that both sides were cherrypicking the wrong data for their positions.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.