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Operation IceBridge, Weddell Sea, 2017.
Compliments of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Ctr |
Perhaps you have seen the "gotcha videos," where someone points at a shallow stretch of meltwater on the ice sheet of Antarctica ... or at a stretch of coarse Antarctic surface ice ... declaring that the Climate Armageddon has finally arrived.
Actually, these were "I-told-you-so videos," where the shallow inland meltwater ponds and/or unsmooth stretches of surface ice are declared evidence of an atmospheric overload of CO2 by which the oceans will soon rise to the point of drowning the Statue of Liberty.
Well, here is your atmospheric reality check, compliments of MIT, Stanford U, Penn State, Chicago U, Columbia U, NASA, and the International Cryosphere Climate Initiative founded in 2009, after the Copenhagen Summit. It comes in notes composed for novices, beginners, and newcomers to the world of atmospheric science.
The Antarctic meltwater ponds have nothing to do with air temperature. They have everything to do with the Sun's ultraviolet light rays penetrating the Antarctic ice sheet twenty-four a day ... seven days a week ... for an approximate 6 month period.
Now, CO2 must be ruled out as the driver of Antarctica's atmosphere per se, because Antarctica's high pressure atmosphere and its desert cold air automatically results in there being less of a concentration of CO2 in the sky there than in the skies of the Tropics & Equator.
The concentration of CO2 anywhere in the atmosphere is VERY LOW
MORE SPECIFICALLY, Antarctica's natural meltwater formation goes as such, according to a 2016 science paper that addressed the Eastern Antarctic ice sheet. It's found at:
https://epic.awi.de/id/eprint/42771/
Next comes the widening of cracks on Antarctica's ice shelves and continental ice sheet. It's actually known as Hydrofracturing. We see ... from Stanford, Columbia U, and Chicago Univ ... that the following is the case:
Here is where natural hydrofracturing of Antarctic's ice SHELVES is explained.
Here is where natural hydrofracturing of the Antarctic ice sheet is explained.
Below: This note addresses the ice shelves, while the one immediately below this note addresses the continental surface ice of Antarctica, aka the Ice Sheet.
Let's review reality:
1} Antarctica really does undergo six consecutive months of constant sunlight beating down upon its 2-mile thick ice sheet.
2} Antarctica is the driest desert on Earth, meaning that the sky above it is a contiguous high pressure system which has very little water vapor and very little "condensation nuclei." This means that the Antarctic sky doesn't readily induce the development of clouds, even though you'll see some cloud formations in the distance, off the coastlines.
3} The constant, 24/7, unblocked sunlight causes surface ice to melt, even where the temperatures are always below freezing. This is due to ultraviolet light literally penetrating the ice, warming it from the inside. The diminishing of the albedo effect then increases the melting of such ponds by allowing more ultraviolet light to reach the surface of Antarctica and penetrate the ice there.
The meltwater has nothing to do with the CO2 level of Earth's atmosphere. In fact, it's meltwater's action that caused the widening of the cracks seen on the Antarctic Continental Ice Sheet & Ice Shelves. This occurs in chronic sub-freezing temps.
The creation of meltwater has everything to do with the Sun's ultraviolet light rays & the lessoning of albedo which allows more ultraviolet light to penetrate the surface ice. I've already explained albedo in a previous post or two ... or three.
Moreover, Antarctica naturally loses 85% or so of its sea ice in the Summertime, even where temperatures are below freezing. It has nothing to do with the CO2 level. It has to do with the wind and ocean currents pushing the ice away from the coastline ... and melting the ice with the unfrozen water below the ice, while the ice drifts to warmer regions away from the Antarctic coastline.
That water isn't being melted by CO2's contribution of infrared radiation. That ice slowly floats away in the Summertime, compliments of the wind and the ocean currents. Then it melts.
Oh, and then there's the lie told by the young climate activists about penguins needing Antarctic ice or they will be unable to breed, followed by the penguins going extinct: Well, the opposite is true.
Beware of Climate Charlatans, especially when they act all so confident in what they assert. That is where the term, Confidence Man, originated. Today, we call them con artists; sometimes smooth-talking snakes. It has the same meaning, either way.
