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posted by Fnord666 on Saturday June 16 2018, @02:02PM   Printer-friendly
from the slippery-slope dept.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Storm-driven ocean swells have triggered the catastrophic disintegration of Antarctic ice shelves in recent decades, according to new research published in Nature today.

Lead author Dr Rob Massom, of the Australian Antarctic Division and the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Cooperative Research Centre, said that reduced sea ice coverage since the late 1980s led to increased exposure of ice shelves on the Antarctic Peninsula to ocean swells, causing them to flex and break. "Sea ice acts as a protective buffer to ice shelves, by dampening destructive ocean swells before they reach the ice shelf edge," Dr Massom said. "But where there is loss of sea ice, storm-generated ocean swells can easily reach the exposed ice shelf, causing the first few kilometres of its outer margin to flex."

"Over time, this flexing enlarges pre-existing fractures until long thin 'sliver' icebergs break away or 'calve' from the shelf front. This is like the 'straw that broke the camel's back', triggering the runaway collapse of large areas of ice shelves weakened by pre-existing fracturing and decades of surface flooding."

Study co-author Dr Luke Bennetts, from the University of Adelaide's School of Mathematical Sciences, said the finding highlights the need for sea ice and ocean waves to be included in ice sheet modelling. This will allow scientists to more accurately forecast the fate of the remaining ice shelves and better predict the contribution of Antarctica's ice sheet to sea level rise, as climate changes. "The contribution of the Antarctic Ice Sheet is currently the greatest source of uncertainty in projections of global mean sea level rise," Dr Bennetts said.

-- submitted from IRC


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  • (Score: 2) by requerdanos on Saturday June 16 2018, @04:55PM (4 children)

    by requerdanos (5997) Subscriber Badge on Saturday June 16 2018, @04:55PM (#693997) Journal

    Even assuming a growing ice sheet, studying the phenomenon that U of A looked at here is still important.

    Basically, thus:

    - Sea ice acts as a buffer between waves (swells) and the ice shelf.
    - There is less sea ice for whatever reason (possibly warmer temperatures, amirite?)
    - So the swells more directly hit the ice shelf.
    - This is bad because ice is brittle. Swells hitting the brittle ice break it.
    - The broken ice breaks away, removing a barrier to glaciers' ice reaching the sea.
    - So, even with a growing ice sheet, more glacial ice reaches the sea and melts, making the oceans rise a little.

    Since the purpose of the study was to clear up "how much" this process contributes to sea rise, it was a great success.

    The presentation in TFA was more focused on telling the world about the catastrophic destruction of pieces of ice, heralding the end of the world in galactic-scale nonsense, but the study was a good and important thing.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 16 2018, @08:31PM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 16 2018, @08:31PM (#694031)

    This is the demonstration.

    - The broken ice breaks away, removing a barrier to glaciers' ice reaching the sea.
    - So, even with a growing ice sheet, more glacial ice reaches the sea and melts, making the oceans rise a little.

    So, in the perfect world of the past with the ice shelf intact, the glacial ice went... where exactly?
    And in the broken real world, more water goes into growing ice sheet, and still even more goes as glacial ice into the sea... appearing from where?
    Sapienti sat.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 17 2018, @05:35PM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 17 2018, @05:35PM (#694297)

      Alarmism has its issues, but willful ignorance is much worse. If you dont want to accept the findings of scientists then study up and point out any errors you see. Your "common sense" is simply not up to the taskbbn of complicated systems.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 17 2018, @08:14PM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 17 2018, @08:14PM (#694337)

        Taking stuff on faith is total antithesis of it.

        BTW, every one of us who worked in real-world science or engineering, knows perfectly well how things get made up. No saints in the trade.

        • (Score: 2) by ants_in_pants on Monday June 18 2018, @01:32AM

          by ants_in_pants (6665) on Monday June 18 2018, @01:32AM (#694387)

          things get made up in minor places, especially when there is lots of pressure to show 'expected' results.

          One paper isn't enough to confirm a theory completely, but consistent results from multiple sources is pretty storng evidence. And "well they might have made it up" is never *ever* a good reason to simply dismiss a study, let alone thousands of them.

          Why are climate denial people so keen on dismissing results from glaceology anyway? It's not like this is confirming or unconfirming anything about climate change, it's just saying "hey these ice sheets are breaking apart". Denying this study doesn't help your cause at all.

          --
          -Love, ants_in_pants