Antarctic Ice Core Reveals Climate Link with Greenland

[RestoreGore]

CLIMATE CONNECTION?

Antarctic Ice Core Reveals Climate Link with Greenland
By Gerald Traufetter

The ice in the Antarctic is giving German scientists a unique glimpse of the earth's climate history. They have discovered evidence of a global temperature seesaw, connecting the two hemispheres.


http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,448089,00.html
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Isn't it amazing and frightening to know that the behavior of humans is also contributing to the conveyor belt of the ocean currents that decide global temperature? Again, this is a CRUCIAL issue that must be dealt with now. What we do here DOES affect the world.

[On the Road]

1. Dokument nicht gefunden

[RestoreGore]

2. The link works now ;-)

[On the Road]

3. Thank You. That's an Interesting (and Frightening Article)

It is looking more and more like the worst-case scenario is happening.

One of John McPhee's books on geology mentions that over the history of the planet, having sizable polar ice caps is an aberration. Hundreds of millions of years ago, ocean currents warmed the poles, resulting in a much lower differential between the equator and the poles than we have today.

The only two conditions under which that does NOT happen are when there is a large land mass over a pole, or when there is an ocean surrounded by enough land to prevent the formation of currents from more southern latitudes. Strangely enough, both conditions exist today.

[RestoreGore]

4. We are certainly seeing the harbingers

As These pictures show.

http://www.spiegel.de/fotostrecke/0,5538,17314,00.html


And while we may be too late to reverse it all, I don't believe we are too late to lessen and delay its impact.

[Nihil]

5. Umm ... this was a bit of a shock to me ...

> And the ice core contained another surprise for the researchers.
> The massive ice masses of the Antarctic are a lot less stable than
> had been thought up to now. When the team's drillmaster Frank Wilhelms
> bored deeper into the rock, water surged into the hole. "There is
> a bubbling brook underneath the ice crust," he reports.
>
> The massive pressure of 250 bar is apparently causing the ice to melt
> -- even at the temperature of minus 2 degrees Celsius (28.4 degrees
> Fahrenheit). "We would have to assume that a considerable part of the
> Antarctic interior ice lies on top of this watery layer," the AWI
> scientist concludes.

Maybe I'm just suffering coffee withdrawal symptoms but this strikes me
as a *very* big deal? Incredibly so if a "considerable part of the
Antarctic interior ice lies on top of this watery layer" ...

Not only does this form a lower friction boundary to allow movement on
an unexpected rate but - more importantly IMO - it casts doubt on the
accuracy of the age estimation (already a bit of a house of cards anyway)
as melt/move/re-freeze will seriously distort the apparent age of all
ice that has passed through that pressure-thawed zone.