Antarctic Cooling
If we are going to talk about global warming and the retreat of the Arctic polar ice cap (such as in my earlier post) then it's only fair that we take a look at what's happening with the ice at the South Pole as well.
Incredibly, in the face of all expectations to the contrary, the amount of ice in Antarctica hit a 30 year record high this year. How is that possible?
Several anti-global warming skeptics took this information and really ran with it. It's true that this story didn't get quite the coverage it deserved (but on this weblog you get all the facts!) - however, it's worth noting that this high was only slightly greater than previous years, as you can see above. The Arctic ice, on the other hand, dipped as low in the last year as in the last nine years before it combined. That's why that issue is so much more worrying.
After reading several articles on subject, it seems that no one is able to give a definitive answer on why this is happening:
[Dr. Mark Serreze, a senior researcher at the snow and ice center] and other scientists acknowledged that both poles were extraordinarily complicated systems of ice, water and land, and that the mix of human and natural influences was not easy to clarify.
I'm far from the expert on this issue. Here are some other possibilities that I've seen floating around:
1) The Northern Hemisphere is more severely affected by carbon emissions since the vast majority of industrialized nations are located there;
2) Rather than simply warming the planet, increased CO2 levels lead to greater temperature extremes in both directions;
3) The hole in the ozone layer at the South Pole is responsible for greater cooling there;
4) (My own theory) Weather patterns are being disrupted, which cause the temperature loss/gain to be uneven for different areas of the globe.
Any ideas? There's also quite a bit of discussion on this issue here.
Whatever the conclusion is, I think it's safe to say two things: 1) that much of the consequences of having over 6 billion people and their industry on this planet is still unknown (since it's never happened before, obviously); and 2) it couldn't possibly hurt anything in the long run to cut down carbon emissions as much as possible.
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3 comments:
Not saying this is related, just a recent and interesting point in my readings related to global warming -global dimming, which was originally used as an argument to against global warming but as it turns out, supports the science on global warming. Essentially pollution is masking the effects fo global warming & what that entails...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_dimming
nova had a great show on this: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sun/
Accumulating of snow at Antarctic ice sheet can be easily understood. The whole region is isolated from large land masses and warm currents, so very little heat goes there from tropical regions. And albedo of pure white snow at Antarctida is extremly high, so very tiny amount of solar radiation is absorbed. This all results in extremly low temperature there, well below melting point. Air in far from shore regions is dry, so humidity, not temperature, limit precipitation. Global warming results in more evaporation and more humidity everywhere, including Antarctic. All excesive water from melting Greenland ice is accumulated in Antarctic ice. Net result is that sea level does not respond to GW, if only very weak.
The better description of this phenomenon would be not "Antarctic cooling", but "Antarctic wetting". This can be compared to what can be seen in old models of refrigerators, without "No Frost" feature: all excessive water vapour precipitated at the coolest part of the chamber, that is cooling tubes.
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