New Scientist - Antarctic Surface Thaw "Most Significant In 30 Years"

[hatrack]

Vast areas of snow in Antarctica melted in 2005, when temperatures warmed up for a week in the summer. Snow melts such as this may have ramifications for larger scale melting of the ice sheets if they are severe or sustained over time, NASA said on Tuesday. A new analysis of satellite data showed that an area the size of California melted and then re-froze – the most significant thawing in 30 years, the US space agency said.

Duncan Wingham at University College London in the UK says the event is "notable". But he underlines that it is, for now, a single weather event and should not be confused with long-term climate change. "If we were to start seeing this happen every single year, then we would have to say: 'Yes this is not the sort of deep freeze we have been thinking'," he told New Scientist.

Unlike the Arctic, Antarctica has shown little to no warming in the recent past with the exception of the Antarctic Peninsula, where ice sheets have been breaking apart.

And although studies have shown that Antarctica is shrinking, researchers say this is not because the continent is melting. Rather, they say its glaciers are flowing into the ocean faster than they are being replenished by snow. (See What's behind the big polar meltdown?.) NASA says the continent melted in multiple areas in 2005, including far inland, at high latitudes and high elevations, where such melting had previously been considered unlikely.

EDIT

http://environment.newscientist.com/article/dn11865-antarctic-surface-thaw-most-significant-in-30-years.html

[truedelphi]

1. A continent cannot melt - the ice layers straddling it sure can

Every time I read posts like the above, I remember the spring day in 1995 when I tuned into the Greenpeace's BBS and read of a posting there - Chilean scientists were out in a research vessel and they were aware that the ice floes coming fromt he Antartic currents were much vaster than ever noted before and they all began to cry.
Scientists don't cry easily - they were aware of computer modelling that shows several stages:
1) global climate changes - including warm enough temps over the poles to cause the ice sheets to melt
2) with the ice melting, the seawater's salt balance will alter - and the result of that will
3) be vast changes in the ocean's climate
4) thus,opcean currents will not behave as they had previously (this is already true wherein the Carribean currents that flow northwards to Britain and Scandanavia will no longer do so - already winters are much colder in England, Norway Sweden, Finland etc due to loss of the warm waters from teh SOuth lands)
4) with one possibility being that eventually there will be such a catastrophic imbalance that the seas will become stagnate
5) with less weather movement,possibility that the jet stream will slow and thus viruses will proliferate, due to lack of cleansing mechanism of jet stream patterns