Global Warming on a Roll at the Poles: Increased Melting, Cracking & Splitting

A recent study found that West Antarctic ice shelves are fracturing at an ever-faster rate, thus losing hold of the rocky walls that slow their flow out to sea. Bottom line: our warming globe is depleting the South Pole's ice cap faster than it can be replenished.

Traditionally, as ice slowly moves out to sea, it bunches up and creates a bottleneck that acts as a doorstop to impede the ice's flow (Check out Extreme Ice Survey to see time lapse photography of ice flow.) But the observed increase in fracturing leads to an increase in calving (when a big chunk of ice simply splits off). Result? An increase in icebergs, and a decrease in ice that sits on (or clings to) the continent.

Unfortunately, this news, from glaciologists at The University of Texas at Austin's Institute for Geophysics, is not an anomaly. Melting, cracking, splitting and calving in Earth's cryosphere (the parts of the globe where water is frozen) may be the most dramatic embodiments of the climatic changes our actions are triggering. Here is just a sampling of some other similarly troubling findings:

• Two Canadian ice shelves -- in place before Europeans settled the area -- have been dramatically melting. One is on the verge of melting away completely.
• Arctic ice cover has dropped by 15 percent per decade since 1980. You can even see it happen via time lapse satellite imagery.
• Glacier National Park's glacier count dropped from 150 in 1850 to 26 today.
• Switzerland's overall glacier volume has decreased by two-thirds.
• Major glaciers have entirely disappeared from the Andes.
• The 18,000-year-old Chactalaya Glacier -- once home to the world's highest ski run -- has melted, leaving nothing more than rocks and mud.
• A Manhattan-sized chunk of Antarctic ice collapsed in 2009.
• In 2007, the Northwest Passage -- the most direct shipping route from Europe to Asia -- was fully clear of ice for the first time since records began.

Dramatic, right? But why should all this melting ice matter to us? Here are a few reasons:

Dr. Martin Sommerkorn, senior climate change adviser for the World Wide Fund for Nature's international Arctic program:

Remove the Arctic ice cap and we are left with a very different and much warmer world. [It will] set in motion powerful climate feed-backs which will have an impact far beyond the Arctic itself, [and could] lead to flooding affecting one quarter of the world's population, substantial increases in greenhouse gas emission from massive carbon pools, and extreme global weather changes.

A recent study published on Climate Central:
Arctic Warming -- which is happening twice as fast as the rest of the Northern Hemisphere -- is altering weather patterns and leading to high-impact, extreme weather events in the United States and Europe.

The Geological Society of America, 2002:
"The recent collapse of several Antarctic Peninsula ice shelves has been linked to rapid regional atmospheric warming during the twentieth century."

Science Daily reporting on two 2007 studies:
Scientists consider that the acceleration of the melting of the Greenland ice cap could play an important role in the future stability of ocean circulation and, hence, in the development of climate change.

Science tells us that Earth's cryosphere is very important, and that it's being severely compromised by anthropogenic climate change. Does all this melting and cracking bring any good news? Sled dogs will finally get a rest? Titanic historical reenactment societies can put all the extra icebergs to good use? I'll keep working on it.

Like "What on Earth?" on Facebook.
Become a Fan here at The Huffington Post.

 

Comments

[bruce1234]

09:07 AM on 04/12/2012

30 years ago climate scientists were and still are the jokes of the scientific community.

[ArnoArrak]

09:45 PM on 04/11/2012

None of these people are very well acquainted with scientific literature on the Arctic. In a peer-reviewed article about Arctic warming [E&E 22(8):1067-1083, 2011] I proved two crucial things about it. First, Arctic warming is not greenhouse warming because laws of physics do not permit this. And second, the Arctic today is being warmed by warm water of the Gulf Stream carried north by Atlantic Ocean currents. Direct measurement of these warm currents in 2010 showed that water temperature reaching the Arctic Ocean then was higher than at any time during the last 2000 years. The current warming of the Arctic started at the turn of the twentieth century, and we have no idea why. Prior to this here was nothing but two thousand years of slow cooling. The warming then paused for thirty years in the middle of the twentieth century and re-started in 1970. Presumably a rearrangement of North Atlantic current system is the cause of all these changes but we don't know why. I would like to see some of the millions of dollars the Federal government spends on climate research spent on solving this mystery instead of wasted on carbon dioxide greenhouse studies.

[NewportMac]

12:01 PM on 04/12/2012

Salinity appears to be one of the keys to understanding Arctic sea ice extent. One study states increased Pacific salinity entering the Arctic via the Bering Strait as the cause of nearly 50% of the 2007 melt.

Arctic sea level pressure is another facet of the system:
Arctic salinity anomalies and their link to the North Atlantic during a positive phase of the Arctic Oscillation
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2007PrOce..73..160H

[eaarth2]

06:07 AM on 04/11/2012

What the arctic ice does in the next few years is crucial. If we see a massive meltdown that exceeds 2007, and 2011- then we could see 80% of the ice gone in late summer by 2018-2020- if so this will set us up for more strange weather in the Northern Hemisphere. That much open ocean- if for only 2-3 months absorbs much warmth and energy- creating more melting.

With so much ice gone- the 'Air conditioner' of the planet has been essentially turned off.

[Bread n Circus]

08:38 AM on 04/11/2012

I hope everyone is prepared for when Gaia sends us a natural correction... Won't be pretty...

[LetsKeepitSimple]

08:31 PM on 04/10/2012

its getting harder to muzzle the real science, it took time for the truth that the earth revolved around the sun, and the religion at the time tried to suppress the truth, much like today

http://notrickszone.com/2012/04/10/50-top-astronauts-scientists-engineers-sign-letter-claiming-giss-is-turning-nasa-into-a-laughing-stock/

[Scottish Guy]

06:54 PM on 04/10/2012

I think this is a very noteworthy article:

http://dailycaller.com/2012/04/10/former-astronauts-blast-nasa-for-extreme-position-on-climate-change/

[Neil Wagner]

09:06 PM on 04/10/2012

A little childlike fable...

Flash back 30 years. The world's status is "5." Very few scientists have any reason to think we'll EVER be anything but 5. But climate scientists say "in 30 years, our complex global number will be 8."

Flash forward 30 years. Climate scientists have spent the past 30 years saying, "We're at 6... we're at 7... we're almost at 8." At the end of 30 years, we're at 8.75.

Why are people acting like this is a fad... or some parlor trick?

Another analogy: I love movies. In 1989's "The Fabulous Baker Boys." Jeff Bridges threatens his brother, Beau. Beau persists and Jeff hits him with a pineapple from the hotel fruit basket.

Beau: You HIT me!!!
Jeff: I TOLD you I was going to hit you!

For 30 years, climate scientists have been telling us we're going to be hit. We're starting to get pummeled.

Are we ever going to defend ourselves?

[Scottish Guy]

10:35 PM on 04/10/2012

I just want to know, when is it going to get hot?

[Andrew Harvey]

11:29 PM on 04/10/2012

Huh?

[ILoveFiction]

02:48 AM on 04/11/2012

The old rocket jockeys need some attention.