Dr. Jeff Masters' WunderBlog |
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| Posted by: Dr. Jeff Masters, 5:36 PM GMT en Diciembre 14, 2010 | +5 |
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Jeff co-founded the Weather Underground in 1995 while working on his Ph.D. He flew with the NOAA Hurricane Hunters from 1986-1990.
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Morning Everyone, Another cold night in wcfl. Should be last nite i have to cover all the plants. Nice little warmup comming starting today.
great song, IKE
Guitar work is incredible. Think I'll take another listen:)
Stand back...stand back.....somebody give me a cheeseburger....
I see a yellow man, a brown man
A white man, a red man
Lookin' for Uncle Sam
To give you a helpin' hand
But everybody's kickin' sand
Even politicians
We're living in a plastic land
Somebody give me a hand, yeah
AMPLIFIED PATTERN WILL DEVELOP ACROSS MUCH OF NORTH AMERICA BY THE
END OF NEXT WEEK...AS ANOTHER UPPER LOW DEEPENS AND DIGS
SOUTHEASTWARD ACROSS THE GREAT LAKES AND MID-ATLANTIC REGION WHILE
A MID-LEVEL RIDGE BUILDS OVER THE CENTRAL PLAINS. THIS MAY ALLOW
YET ANOTHER SURGE OF COLD ARCTIC AIR TO INVADE SOUTH FLORIDA BY
THE END OF NEXT WEEK.
thank you "bearer of good news" ROFL!
Just what I wanted to hear.. more "Global Cooling"....
I remember when homes never used their heaters in South Florida..
the past few winters, we have used our heaters much more often than our A/C units...
12.15.10
When surface winds are strong, they stir the Southern Ocean and lift the warm water (red) onto the continental shelf where the additional heat contributes to melt of the ice shelf.
When surface winds are strong, they stir the Southern Ocean and lift the warm water (red) onto the continental shelf where the additional heat contributes to melt of the ice shelf. Credit: Frank Ippolito Scientists have previously shown that West Antarctica is losing ice, but how that ice is lost remained unclear. Now, using data from Earth observing satellites and airborne science missions, scientists are closing in on ice loss culprits above and below the ice.
The findings, presented Dec. 15 at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) in San Francisco, Calif., are expected to improve predictions of sea level rise.
Time Not Healing Glacial Wounds
A new analysis by Ted Scambos, a glaciologist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder Colo., and colleagues found that more than a decade after two major Antarctic ice shelves collapsed, glaciers once buttressed by the shelves continue to lose ice.
Changes are most evident in the West Antarctic Ice Sheet and along the Antarctic Peninsula. A spine of mountains forces passing winds to give up their moisture as snow, feeding glaciers that in turn feed the ice shelves that jut out into the Southern Ocean. More than a decade ago, dramatic changes started affecting a series of ice shelves, collectively called Larsen, along the Peninsula's northeast coast. In 1995, Larsen A was the first to collapse followed by a larger loss of Larsen B in 2002. Today, a small piece of the Larsen B and the entirety of the vast Larsen C hang on.
Investigating how the glaciers have responded to the loss of these ice shelf "dams," Scambos and colleagues tracked elevation information using data from satellites such as NASA's Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite (ICESat) and previous airborne missions. They show that between 2001 and 2006, glaciers feeding Larsen A and Larsen B lost 12 gigatons of ice loss per year, or 30 percent of all ice lost throughout the Peninsula.
Moreover, the continued draw down of glaciers, such as Drygalski Glacier, fifteen years after the loss of Larsen A, have set precedent for what to expect elsewhere. Losses by glaciers that fed the Larsen B, such as Crane Glacier, are likely to continue.
Scambos and a team of colleagues have now placed instruments on glaciers just south of the area where the shelves disintegrated, anticipating that further warming will lead to further glacier speed-ups. The instruments and new aircraft overflights will provide further insight into shelf break-up and the onset of ice acceleration.
When surface winds are strong, they stir the Southern Ocean and lift the warm water (red) onto the continental shelf where the additional heat contributes to melt of the ice shelf. Credit: Frank Ippolito
Wind Matters
Further south is West Antarctica's Pine Island Glacier, another site of major ice loss presently draining more than 19 cubic miles of ice per year from the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. It continues to deteriorate rapidly and scientists want to know why.
By combining satellite and airborne data, Bob Bindschadler, a glaciologist with the Goddard Earth Sciences and Technology Center at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., has successfully gained more insight into interactions between the atmosphere, ocean and ice even though the data cant reveal these connections directly.
Bindschadler and colleagues looked at images from the Landsat satellite and spotted a series of large surface undulations on the ice shelf. Next they matched the undulations with the timing of warm water pulses in the waters adjacent to the ice shelf. When surface winds are strong, they stir the Southern Ocean and lift the warm water onto the continental shelf where the additional heat contributes to melt.
Airborne data showed the ice shelf was up to 150 meters (492 feet) thinner when the warmer water was present, allowing Bindschadler's team to establish a direct link between the rate of ice shelf melting and atmospheric wind speed. When the team accounted for the heat coming in and the ice lost, they concluded that only 22 percent of the heat is used in melting. Whether the remaining heat might melt additional ice is unknown, but it is clear that the atmospheric circulation has a strong role on the future of the ice shelf and the fate of the ice sheet inland. Stronger winds would lead to an acceleration of ice loss; weaker winds would have a stabilizing effect.
"In short, ice shelves are affected by what winds are doing," Bindschadler said. "As Antarctic Circumpolar winds continue to increase, ice shelves are at increasing risk."
West Antarctica is seeing dramatic ice loss particularly the Antarctic Peninsula and Pine Island regions. Ice loss culprits include the loss off buttressing ice shelves, wind, and a sub-shelf channel that allows warm water to intrude below the ice. Credit: NASA/NSIDC
Underwater Channel Promoting Melt?
A gravity instrument, flown during NASA's Operation IceBridge campaign in 2009, revealed the presence of a sinuous channel (blue) below West Antarctica's Pine Island ice shelf. The channel allows warm ocean water to reach the grounding line, leading to melting of the ice shelf from below. Credit NASA
Taking a closer look at Antarctica's Pine Island Glacier is Michael Studinger, a glaciologist with the Goddard Earth Sciences and Technology Center at NASA Goddard.
Studinger is project scientist for NASA's Operation IceBridge mission -- an airborne science campaign that makes annual surveys of polar snow and ice -- that is helping researchers understand changes to Pine Island and other critical regions along West Antarctica and the Peninsula.
After analyzing data from the mission's first Antarctic deployment in 2009, the team revealed for the first time a curious feature below the Pine Island shelf: a sinuous channel that allows warm ocean water to reach the grounding line, leading to melting of the ice shelf from below.
More information will become available throughout Operation IceBridge, which sustains watch over Earth's poles until the launch of ICESat-2, scheduled for January 2016. In November 2010, teams concluded the second Antarctic campaign during which they flew over sea ice and key glaciers including a return mission over Pine Island Glacier. These data will be incorporated into the tools scientists use to refine estimates of future sea level rise.
SWFL - SRQ
I am convinced
HELL is a frozen place
my veggie garden is Kaput
transformed from a Sahara Oasis
to some frozen tundra
...there are No birds singing - even my Hens are
on mute.
Checking the garden 6:30AM, Kinda looks like a windswept Chernobyl
Yesterday I had a FIRST TIME experience...had to break ICE in the water troughs -- couldn't believe it!
But thankfully we warm today - at least for a little while
LOL I am almost there, at 34,863 and never been banned from Dr Master's blog yet, but have from a few personal blogs! LOL
congrats IKE!
I'm still totally incredulous you would prefer southern girls frigid and chattering, then hot, sweaty and TAN
be careful Whaleboy -LOL- methinks you're looking for StinkEye *big smile*
{{Surf}}}
I hear you, I am not going to fight another cold winter here in SE Fla.. if it cannot live in our new "colder climate" then I have to stop planting winter gardens...
and the tropical critters need to travel further south...
the the critters that live in tropical waters, need to go further south into the warmer Caribbean Sea..
I just do not have it in me to keep trying to save my winter garden and my topical plants if this is going to continue for 3 months this winter....
I think I need to move even further South.
Pottery??? you out there??? you have room for another Family on your island???
Chistmas lights & sheets did well on the tomatoes & cucumbers. Had near a 10 hr freeze night before last with 25.1F as the low. They lived. All the winter veggies~things like brocolli, cabbage, collards, onions, garlic, snow peas look good. Chili pepper died, along with all the last of the summer stuff~ limas, sweet taters, okra.. So far so good with the citrus.
Surf~ Your garlic died back too?
I also agree with Surf and Skye, we like to be hot, sweaty and tan!
i havent been on here in a month and you all are still arguing over global warming.
Horrid.
Personal ban? WTH? And Admin? For what? I think you need to read further back, too.
An music album is a collection of songs. The media format is irrelevant.
It's 91S the TCFA was cancelled as it made landfall.
--Julia was a bit stronger than thought; the previous top speed was estimated to have been 115 knots, but that has been bumped up to 120 knots;
--Julia was a hurricane for six hours less than previously thought, staying at that status for 84 hours;
--Julia was a major hurricane for six hours longer than previously thought, staying at Cat 3 or better for 30 hours;
--Julia was at tropical storm force or better for 12 hours longer than previously estimated, lasting 192 hours at that status;
--Julia's ACE was raised to 15.5125 (from 14.1825), and the storm's HDP rose from 11.345 to 11.5025;
--Seasonal ACE is now calculated to be 161.15.
The reports states the following: "Julia is the strongest hurricane in the Atlantic hurricane database (HURDAT) to be recorded east of 40 W. However, it is highly unlikely that either this peak intensity as a Category 4 hurricane or its 1.25 day duration as a major hurricane would have been observed for a hurricane in this location before the advent of regular satellite imagery and the Dvorak intensity analysis system in the 1970s. There were no reliable ship or coastal reports of tropical-storm-force or greater winds received in association with Julia. However, it is possible that that some tropical-storm-force winds did affect the southern Cape Verde islands."
and i'm glad to see your reply too Atmo, my memory does serve me correctly. that was what i thought, and i had no recollection of you standing firmly on either platform. i still think your modus operandi limits scope by strict adherence to data, but i also know you are an advocate for far better data. i do believe however, there is a time where responsible action requires imagination. there's a point in which the data need be figured out. otherwise you are no different than the output on a computer screen, relying entirely on the integrity of the input.
we do have eyes and computers in our heads too.
Your comment about imagination speaks well to a comment I made last night about everyone's different amount of allowable uncertainty, unknowns, assumptions, etc. which you've wrapped up nicely in one word.
Obviously, we know where many of us fit into that...
Cheers!
That's astounding and depressing at the same time, and further evidence of just how quickly things are heating up. It also correlates nicely with the excellent article to which I linked a few days ago which stated the following: "New analyses of the heat content of the waters off Western Antarctic Peninsula are now showing a clear and exponential increase in warming waters undermining the sea ice, raising air temperatures, melting glaciers and wiping out entire penguin colonies."
You mentioned 19 cubic miles of melt from just one area. I did some calculating, and that's just under 21 trillion gallons of water (20,921,225,799,689.99424, to be precise), or nearly enough to fill nearly 35 million standard Olympic-sized swimming pools. Incredible...
Excellent comment; thanks for posting.
our understanding of all things is as fluid as the knowledge we purport to know. there is much to be gained on the order of intellectual wisdom by means of the Socratic paradox, "i know that i know nothing".
the things we think we know now are based on the mistakes of our past. this stands to reason that the things we will know in the future derive from the mistakes we make now, either by thought or by action. i agree with Misanthrope that there is no absolutism in science. the whole art is a best fit practice. that is where he is coming from by some of his more irritable statements about blindness and cowardice. that is also why i cite responsible action based on imagination.
Nice article and so very true.
I've been very cold sensitive all my life, even when I lived in Mid-South area for 25 years.
That is why I always wanted to go where it is always warm...
but regardless of personally being cold sensitive or not,
when South Florida gets freezes and frosts,
Everyone suffers, in fresh food availability and prices
and the natural tropical wild life..on land or in the sea and fresh waters.
I enjoyed reading the article, thanks!
Nope. Models back on. On or right after XMAS.
This system and its
associated cold front will transport another shot of modified Arctic
air into S fla with both the GFS and European model (ecmwf) timing the frontal
passage right around or just after sunset on Christmas day with
the cold air filtering in behind the front. Both models also show
the coldest air arriving beyond this forecast package but have had
consistency in their past few runs so all those interested should
keep informed with updated forecasts through the week.
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