All of this meltwater contributes to the rise of sea levels around the world. The Southeastern United States from Tidewater Virginia to the Texas coastline on the Gulf of Mexico bears evidence of how much the seas are rising. Chesapeake Bay provides an interesting example of the dynamic changes caused by continental ice sheets dating from 20,000 years ago, at the penultimate Pleistocene maximum, to 11,700 years ago when North America’s land ice vanished, to the present day.

The phenomenon is known as isostatic rebound or isostatic adjustment. The interior of the continent where the ice sheets lay before melting has been rising for more than 11,000 years and deforming those areas along the edge. That means where some parts of the continent rise, other parts get distorted and fall. This is the same phenomenon we observe when we leave our beds in the morning and our mattresses readjust to not being weighed down by us.

The sections of the North American continent where ice sheets existed including the Northeast and Great Lakes regions are seeing a rise in elevation. The areas on their fringes are experiencing the opposite. In the case of Chesapeake Bay and Norfolk, the continental edge and shelf upon which they sit is tilting downward. That means the land around Chesapeake Bay including the Delmarva peninsula and Tidewater Virginia to the south is subsiding. Combined with ocean thermal expansion and meltwater produced by diminishing sea ice in the Arctic and the thinning of Greenland’s ice sheet, it spells trouble for places like Norfolk and further inland, Washington, DC. Norfolk is home to America’s largest East Coast naval base. Measuring sea level rise there shows it is happening faster than anywhere else on the U.S. Eastern Seaboard. Since 1992, the rise has been twice the global average.

At some point, once the isostatic rebound ends for the areas once under ice, the continent should see a levelling out. But we are talking in terms of geological time which involves thousands to tens of thousands of years. Until then the deformation will continue.

Studying this phenomenon and sea level rise from melting polar, alpine and sea ice is producing some interesting hypotheses. A study undertaken by scientists at Ohio State University published on August 2, 2024, in the journal, Science Advances, has looked at isostatic rebound and global sea level changes into the next few centuries. It concludes that the relatively rapid uplift of Antarctica as its ice sheets melt needs to be accounted for if we are to continue to do a managed retreat from coastlines facing rising seas.

The study begins by stating:

“With nearly 700 million people living in coastal areas and estimates of the cost of sea-level rise reaching ~14 trillion dollars by the end of the century, understanding the future contribution of the polar ice sheets to global sea levels in coming years is of critical societal importance.”

It then looks at what the melting of the Antarctic ice sheets causing isostatic rebound in Antarctica could do to sea levels. The study notes that as the ice starts melting and rebound begins, the uplift can act to preserve the remaining ice and reduce the southern continent’s contribution to rising oceans by as much as 40% over current climate model predictions.

The study further notes that Antarctica’s changing shape could prove to speed up isostatic rebound so that uplifted surfaces from reduced ice volumes happen in decades and not in centuries or thousands of years. In other words, we are no longer working at the snail’s pace of geological time as in the Pleistocene, the Ice Age that preceded the Holocene.

GPS data from the Antarctic ice sheets and North America shows that the isostatic rebound of the former is currently five times faster at 5 centimetres (nearly 2 inches) compared to the latter at 1 centimetre (0.4 inches) per year. Literally, in Antarctica, once the weight of the ice is removed, the continent bobs back up. This rebound is lowering sea levels adjacent to where the ice is melting and may have unforeseen impacts elsewhere on sea levels around the world.

In other studies that look at the combination of melt and rebound another effect has been noted. The two are altering Earth’s gravitational field. A paper previously discussed appearing in Geophysical Research Letters in September 2017, described findings that showed Antarctic ice melt was causing gravitational changes elsewhere while producing enormous volumes of water that were ending up impacting shorelines far removed from the southern continent. It correlated with a 52% faster rate of sea level rise off California and Florida’s coasts equating the cause being gravitational changes occurring from the melting ice and upward bounce of Antarctica’s landmass.

The current research described here includes an expression of the need to do much more research to better understand the complex relationships between the Earth’s crust and the impact climate change has atop it. Scientists need to do more data gathering and research to help us better understand the wide-ranging influences that rising greenhouse gas emissions are having on our world for both the short and long term.

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This summer in the Northern Hemisphere, temperatures have never been hotter. Is this because of a strong El Niño happening in the Pacific, or is this more evidence that we are losing the battle to mitigate global warming?

The warming isn’t just happening north of the equator. Scientists monitoring sea ice surrounding Antarctica indicated that the maximum reached as of September 13, 2023, was 1.75 million square kilometres (676,000 square miles) less in extent than the mean based on data collected between 1981 and 2010. Antarctica has seen rainy days over the past few years, a rare phenomenon for a continent encased in snow and ice. With less sea ice, the Southern Ocean surrounding Antarctica is warming which accelerates the loss even more.

The Arctic Ocean, in recent years, has seen some of its lowest sea ice maximums but compared to the Antarctic appears more stable. Greenland, however, is exhibiting losses similar to those observed at the southern pole. Named Greenland by early Viking explorers who colonized areas along the coast during the Medieval Optimum, the island may soon begin to earn its green moniker again as it experiences accelerated meltdowns of the island-wide ice sheet. The question that climatologists are asking is can the Greenland ice loss be reversed even if mean global atmospheric temperatures rise beyond 1.5 Celsius?

The latest climate modelling points to abrupt and rapid acceleration should mean atmospheric temperatures rise 2.3 Celsius (4.1 Fahrenheit). Nils Bochow, a climate scientist from The Arctic University of Norway in Tromsø, who is the lead author of a study appearing in Nature doesn’t believe that we are beyond the ability to stabilize and reverse the island’s ice loss even if we surpass these temperature thresholds. He notes, however, that acting now to mitigate global warming will be a good “bet against time” because “it gets only harder the longer we wait.”

The biggest threat from Greenland’s accelerating ice melt is the impact it is having on sea level rise now and in the future. The island contains enough ice to raise ocean levels by 7 metres (almost 23 feet). The current annual ice loss of 270 billion tons is raising sea levels by 4 millimetres (0.157 inches) per year. If the anticipated acceleration from rising temperatures occurs (highly likely) climatologists do not believe the entire Greenland ice sheet will vanish. And if climate mitigating actions throughout the rest of the century were to occur, mean global temperature rise could reverse. But ocean level rise amounting to several metres will be with us for centuries if not millennia in the future.

The Antarctic picture has enormous implications for the fragile wildlife that depends on the preservation of the Southern Ocean sea ice and stable climate conditions. The latest victims of warming in Antarctica are Emperor Penguins who have seen significant losses in numbers with the threat of extinction. And seal populations dependent on sea ice as their habitat are also imperilled.

Vishnu Nandan and Robbie Mallett, from the Universities of Calgary and Manitoba respectively, have been in the Antarctic working with a British project called DEFIANT (Drivers and Effects of Fluctuations in sea Ice in the ANTarctic) with plans to deploy ground-based radar to track sea ice conditions. The data the two have been collecting shows that Antarctic sea ice is thinning. As it thins it loses its white colour, becoming opaque and eventually translucent. When white the ice reflects solar radiation. When opaque and translucent, it absorbs solar radiation converting it to heat. Polar oceans that warm are linked to climate disasters happening elsewhere on the planet.

All in all, the longer we wait to mitigate global warming, the more devastating the consequences. We can reverse temperature rise by eliminating the burning of fossil fuels. But the polar regions will have warmer oceans and changes to the life that has adapted and thrived there since the onset of the Ice Age some 2.58 million years ago.

The post Humanity Should Be Proud in Reaching the 1.5 Celsius Atmospheric Temperature Rise Well Ahead of Climate Forecasts appeared first on Techso Mogro.

The study noted another characteristic of the ice sheet behaviour, the speed at which destabilization and restabilization occurred in the past. Instead of centuries or millennia, the changes happened in decades.

The authors of the study are a team of researchers from the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand. They note the difficulty in deciphering what happened to sea levels during interglacial periods during the Ice Age, known as the Pleistocene. This most recent cooldown dates back approximately 1.85 million years. Some climatologists believe the Ice Age is still with us and what we are experiencing is an interglacial warming period that started 11,500 and 10,000 years ago. Without anthropogenic global warming, some have speculated that we would experience a new glacial episode in the not too distant future with we being the distinguishing factor. It is our behaviour in moving from hunter-gatherers to farmers and urban dwellers that have altered the landscape in an unprecedented fashion and filled the planet’s atmosphere with industrial warming pollutants.

What this means for Antarctica’s two massive ice sheets, the largest remaining repositories of continental ice on Earth, remains unknown. Referred to as the East and West Antarctic Ice Sheets, the latter rests on bedrock 3.4 metres (over 11 feet) below current sea levels. If it were to melt in its entirety it would raise global sea levels 4.3 metres (over 14 feet). A portion of the East is also exposed to marine instability although the majority lies on bedrock above sea level. Were the marine portion to melt it would contribute 3 to 4 metres (approximately 10 to 14 feet) of additional sea-level rise.

Studying the deglaciation in Antarctica from 19,000 to 8,000 years ago shows the contribution of the retreat of the two continental ice sheets to their current positions and thickness. That deglaciation contributed to a sea-level rise of 16 metres. It didn’t happen at once, but rather in a series of distinct pulses lasting over several centuries.

The paper mentioned above involved studying Iceberg Alley and the calving of ice from the ice shelves and Antarctic margins. Well documented, it shows from iceberg data, that the transition from low to high counts and calving is rapid, indicating deglaciation episodes could be decades-long or less with substantial short-term impacts on sea levels. The reverse is true as well with glaciation just as rapid.

In addition, to understand the impact of future deglaciations, the paper describes the geological and climatological record of recent interglacial warming. Where there may be differences in predicting a future course for the two Antarctic ice sheets comes from understanding the environmental dynamics of interglacial deglaciations which include:

• the warming of the subsurface ocean.
• the increasing warming of the atmosphere.
• the coincident deglaciation in the Northern Hemisphere leading to rising sea levels further eroding the underside of the ice shelves and continental margins.
• the influx of freshwater melt from continental ice sheet melt.
• the transfer of heat from the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation from the Northern to Southern Hemisphere.

Current modelling, without these other dynamics, suggests surface waters of the Southern Ocean abutting the two ice sheets will warm sufficiently to cause sea levels to from 10 centimetres (0.3 feet) to one metre (3.3 feet) by 2100, and up to 16 metres (52 feet) by 2500. The more extreme modelling assumes no mitigation action on our part to reverse global warming.

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• Stopping polar ice melt
• Green walls and reforestation

Stopping Polar Ice Melt

Like the boy who put his finger in the dike to stop a flood in the Dutch tale of old, scientists are coming up with their own versions for stopping the ice from melting in Antarctica. There are two current proposals. One suggests we build a massive wall under the Antarctic ice sheets to keep them frozen and in place for the next thousand years. The other suggests we make it snow a lot more in Antarctica to preserve the ice sheets. In both cases, the idea is to stop catastrophic sea-level rise over the next few centuries that would inundate large swaths of coastlines where most of humanity lives.

The wall idea would be a megaproject unlike any undertaken in human history. Described by its proposers as a “locally targeted intervention,” it would stabilize the outlets of specific ice streams flowing off Antarctica, blocking off the warming Southern Ocean from undermining ice shelves and the glaciers behind them.

Described as simple structures to prevent ice field erosion and melting, the targeted site would be between 80 and 100 kilometers (50 to 62 miles) in width, at the base of the Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica. This would be a test case that if successful would lead to other site builds. States Michael Wolovick, Department of Geosciences, Princeton University, “The most important result is that a meaningful ice sheet intervention is broadly within the order of magnitude of plausible human achievements … If [glacial geoengineering] works there then we would expect it to work on less challenging glaciers as well.”

In a second proposal described as stabilizing the West Antarctic Ice Sheet using mass surface deposition, researchers propose stabilizing two West Antarctica glaciers, the Pine Island and Thwaites. Both have recorded significant ice loss in the last two decades beginning with 6 Gigatons and growing to more than 40 Gigatons annually. What the researchers believe could work as a geoengineering experiment, would be the creation of massive amounts of artificial snow, dumping it on both glacier surfaces to stabilize them.

The idea would be to add up to 10 meters (32 feet) of surface ice to the glaciers annually over the course of a decade by manufacturing snow in the same way ski resorts do today, but on orders of magnitude much greater than anything ever done. The amount of ice that would be added equals 7,400 gigatons. A gigaton is a billion tons.

The researchers conceive of the building of pumps to bring up ocean water some 640 meters (2,100 feet) in elevation, desalinating it and then using snowmaking equipment to spray it over the ice sheets. Power would come from 12,000 climate-hardy wind turbines.

The price tag of both of these ice saving schemes isn’t even accounted for in the proposals. And as geoengineering schemes go, one could compare them to Manhattan Projects in their scope, requiring international agreement. Neither proposal talks about unintended consequences of implementation, or of failure, other than to point out doing nothing would lead to many of our coastal cities being inundated over the next few centuries.

Green Walls, Reforestation, and Afforestation

In China and Africa, tree planting on a colossal scale is underway to alter the climate of vast areas of land.

The new Chinese Great Wall has been on the go since 1978 with 66 billion trees planted so far. The project is planned to continue until 2050 when it will stretch some 4,500 kilometers (2,800 miles) across the northern parts of China and covering 405 million hectares (more than 1 billion acres) increasing the world’s forest coverage by more than 10%. What started as a way to block the expansion of the Gobi Desert, is now seen as a carbon reduction project with the hope that the majority of trees planted can survive and grow. If they don’t then the dying will further contribute to global warming.

The African Green Wall is a project crossing 11 countries along the southern boundary where the Sahara Desert meets the Sahel. Launched in 2004 the project involves the planting of drought-hardy native trees over a 7,000 kilometer (approximately 4,350 mile) stretch, to a depth of 15 kilometers (9.3 miles), to keep the Sahara at bay, and alter local climates to allow for sustainable agriculture and the harvesting of the produce created by the trees. The native species being grown include Acacia, Jujube, and Desert Date trees.

The jury is out on whether either Green Wall will achieve the purpose for which they are intended.

Recently, Thomas Crowther, an Assistant Professor of Environmental Systems Science, ETH Zurich, a Swiss science and technology university, spoke about a way to remove carbon from the atmosphere in volumes greater than the human-produced emissions our modern industrial world produces. He argued that the most effective way for us to address climate change was through biogeochemical cycling, the planting of 1.2 trillion trees in the world’s parks, forests, and abandoned wasteland. Crowther considers trees to be the “most powerful weapon in the fight against climate change.” Planting 1.2 trillion would remove the equal of carbon emissions produced over a decade based on present output. Crowther has identified more than a million sites around the world where afforestation and new planting could help to achieve his targeted number.

There is no doubt that tree planting represents a natural geoengineering tool to combat climate change. But questions remain. If you plant trees in areas where they cannot sustain themselves, cannot grow to maturity, then the long-term carbon sequestration capacity of such growth is questionable. Massive tree die-offs contribute to atmospheric emissions. And planting trees that are not suitable to the environments in which we are attempting to grow them is a recipe for climate disaster.

Currently, the United Nations has launched a trillion tree campaign. And the continent other than Africa most vulnerable to climate change, Australia, is planting trees with a target of 1 billion by 2050. The goal is to remove 18 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, 3.6% of Australia’s present annual CO2 emissions.

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Himalaya Glaciers are Melting

The just published Hindu Kush Himalaya Assessment report reveals that the planet’s third pole, the glaciers of the Himalaya Mountain chain is melting rapidly with predictions that two-thirds of the ice volume may be gone by 2100. The Hindu Kush is a primary water source for the rivers that flow into India, Pakistan, China, Bangladesh, and the nations of Southeast Asia, home to 2 billion people. The report represents the cumulative work of 200 scientists and was subjected to peer review from 125 outside experts. Even if the global mean temperature rise were to be contained at no greater than 1.5 Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) the research indicates that a third of the ice would be gone. At a 2.0 Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) rise, half would disappear.

The Hindu Kush is a range of mountains 3,500 kilometers in length. Over that distance some of the glaciers remain stable, and some are even increasing in volume. But the largest number are melting leading to increased river water volume. This is expected to continue through the mid-century before volumes decline wtih the Indus and Central Asian rivers most impacted.

Antarctica is Melting

Following fast upon the latest reports about Antarctica melting six times faster than four decades ago, comes the revelation that an enormous cavity has formed under the Thwaites Glacier which is currently pouring 50 billion tons of ice into the Southern Ocean annually. The contribution of this glacier alone is contributing to 4% of global sea level rise. But the discovery of the cavity, over 300 meters in height, and 10 kilometers in length, represents 14 billion tons of missing ice. The findings appear in the January 30, 2019 edition of Science Advances.

As for the story about the faster melting of continental ice from Antarctica, the report appearing in the January 14, 2019 edition of the journal PNAS is troubling because it shows ice loss has accelerated by a factor of over six since 1980. The volume represents 252 billion tons and is contributing to sea level rise of 1.3 centimeters (0.5 inches) over the period studied.

Australia is Simmering

The Southern Hemisphere is into summer and Australia, already hot, is seeing new record temperatures across the continent. In Adelaide last week the thermometer rose to 46.7 Celsius (116 Fahrenheit). January has turned out to be the hottest month in the country’s history with the mean temperature exceeding 30 Celsius (86 Fahrenheit). This follows the warmest December on record with every state and territory in the country under a heatwave.

In a special climate statement issued on January 24th, the country’s weather service described conditions affecting areas from the tropical coasts of Queensland to Western Australia. Rainfall was reported as only 20% of average. Bushfires broke out in Tasmania under the heat and tinder-dry conditions. In New South Wales one community reported four consecutive days of temperatures above 47 Celsius (117 Fahrenheit). In the Murray-Darling basin, Australia’s largest river system, scientists reported hundreds of thousands of native fish dying from rising river temperatures leading to algae blooms and the deoxygenation of the water.

Meanwhile, at the northeastern corner of the continent, abnormal monsoonal type rain has created devastating floods. Nearly 120 centimeters (4 feet) fell in seven days accompanied by 90 kilometer (50 mile) per hour winds. In one day 25 centimeters (close to one foot) fell.

If any country and continent is the canary in the cage for climate change, it is Australia.

NASA and NOAA Report 2018 the Fourth Warmest Year on Record

Stated Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) Director Gavin Schmidt, “2018 is yet again an extremely warm year on top of a long-term global warming trend.” Temperatures last year were 0.83 Celsius (1.5 Fahrenheit) degrees warmer than the mean registered between 1951 and 1980. And 2018 turned out to be the fourth warmest year on record just behind 2016, 17, and 15. NASA reported that the past five years represent collectively, the warmest years ever recorded.

NASA gathered the temperature data from 6,300 weather stations, ship and buoy sea surface temperature observations and measurements from Antarctica.  NOAA issued findings just slightly lower than those of NASA (a rise of 0.79 Celsius or 1.42 Fahrenheit) above the 20th-century average. GISS is within the Earth Sciences Divison of NASA with laboratories in Greenbelt, Maryland, and Columbia University in New York City.

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At the time of our discussion, I remembered having written about the correlation between global warming and the growth in Antarctic sea ice in a blog posting some three years earlier.

But it wasn’t my writing that was giving my climate change skeptic friend the fuel for his anti-climate change rant. He told me he had been reading a number of articles with headlines that loudly described the evidence of Antarctic summer sea ice increasing. Some of those articles written by journalists concluded, based on the Antarctic data, that climate change was a hoax.

What he and these writers failed to note was parts of the data set associated with the summer sea increases indicated that both the Antarctic and Arctic were undergoing a dynamic change that was far more complex.

The evidence showed that as Antarctic sea ice increased, Arctic sea ice declined. Similarly, as Antarctic sea ice thickened, Arctic sea ice thinned.

The disproportionate changes between the Antarctic and Arctic didn’t appear in these articles. And these were important facts including that melting Arctic sea ice was setting a pace 25 times faster than that of a freezing Antarctic, and that Antarctic sea ice increases were more than being offset by decreases in land ice on the continent with the latter evaporating and melting three times faster than the gains being made at sea.

So why would sea ice grow in the Antarctic? The melting of land-based glaciers introduced fresh water into the Southern Ocean in significant quantities. Freshwater is lighter and more buoyant than salt water, and it freezes sooner. Hence, sea ice around the continent where little other change was occurring would lead to sea ice increasing.

Since then research on the Antarctic related to climate change has dramatically increased providing us with a much better picture of what actually is happening at the South Pole. The latest research to be released is a compilation of collected data from 24 satellite surveys, 80 scientists, and 42 international research organizations. The period of study is from 1992 to 2017.

What they found can be summarized as follows:

• ice losses from Antarctica over the stated period of time have raised global sea levels 7.6 millimeters (0.3 inches).
• prior to 2012 ice losses from Antarctica equaled 76 billion metric tons annually.
• since 2012 ice losses have increased to 201 billion metric tons annually.
• West Antarctica has seen ice losses grow from 53 to 159 billion metric tons.
• an ice shelf collapse on the Antarctic Peninsula has added 25 billion metric tons to ice loss per the early 2000s.
• East Antarctic has gained 5 billion metric tons of ice annually over the same period of time.

The ice-sheet data collection project, an ongoing effort by NASA and ESA is continuing to monitor changes in the Antarctic. Satellites continue to observe and collect information on the continent’s changing profile. An organization called IMBIE, formed in 2011 intends to provide annual updates to the ice status of the southern continent and its surrounding ocean. The data collection that produced the results described here comes from openly available data sets collected and posted to a spreadsheet which can be downloaded from the IMBIE site.

What lies ahead?

Two possible scenarios projected 50 years into the future:

Without efforts to reduce carbon emissions on a global scale, researchers describe outcomes as follows:

• A loss of major ice shelves by 2070 leading to increased loss of grounded Antarctic ice leading to an accelerated sea level rise.
• The loss of sea ice contributing to dramatic changes in the marine environment in polar regions.
• Expansion of human activity in Antarctica leading to changes in the continental environment and threats to all native existing species.

With efforts to keep emissions low within the parameters called for by the IPCC and Paris Climate Agreement, an alternate outcome is possible including:

• Antarctic ice shelves stabilize and remain intact with a dramatic slowing of annual loss of ice and lower rises in sea levels.
• Antarctic ecosystems remain intact with no mass extinction.
• Human activity in the Antarctic remains managed under a collaborative governance regime to ensure the continent’s native species survive.

The complete study entitled “Mass balance of the Antarctic Ice sheet from 1992 to 2017” appears in the June 13, 2018 edition of the journal Nature.

The infographic and chart below illustrate the contribution that Antarctic ice loss is making to global sea level by showing which geographic areas of the continent are contributing the most. The stability of West Antarctica’s continental ice is clearly of greatest concern.

The post Back in 2016 a Climate Change Skeptic Told Me That What’s Happening in Antarctica Refutes Global Warming appeared first on Techso Mogro.

How do we think we can colonize the Moon or Mars when we cannot do this here on Earth in Antarctica. Today we have no permanent settlements there. So how do we think we can do this in two places even more inhospitable than the most southerly of Earth’s continents?

The Story of Our Human Presence in Antarctica

Humans first started visiting Antarctica in the late 18th century. Captain James Cook circumnavigated the continent in 1775. But it is not clear whether he ever sighted the mainland. More than likely remote islands of the Southern Ocean were mistaken for the continent. The first sightings of the Antarctic Peninsula came in 1820. The first landfall in 1821. What was the driving factor for 19th-century ships to visit the continent? Seals and whales.

For a time the search for the Magnetic South Pole motivated further exploration. In 1841 one expedition reached the Ross Ice Shelf but no landfall. After that whalers and sealers dominated human activity in proximity to the Antarctic continent. Then came exploration at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century with the race to the South Pole. Some human explorers actually attempted to winter in Antarctica and found the continent a foreboding and unforgiving place. Many died. When Scott and Amundsen made their attempts to reach the pole, there was no thought of permanent settlement, just the planting of a flag to symbolize a human achievement.The conditions these explorers had to deal with included temperatures as low as -61 Celsius (-78 Fahrenheit).

The Antarctic expeditions were accompanied by provisions and animals, dog teams for Amundsen and ponies for Scott. They could hunt seal before heading into the interior using what they slaughtered for meat and blubber, the latter serving as fuel for fire and warmth. If desperate their animal companions could be sacrificed to keep them alive. Even so, Scott’s expedition did not survive the trek. Amundsen faired better.

Expeditions followed Amundsen’s success but none attempted to settle the southern continent. In the 1920s Richard Byrd flew over the South Pole in a series of expeditions. In 1934 he established a research station that could be continuously occupied. Antarctica even became a hotbed in the global struggle between the Western democracies and Germany’s Third Reich. The latter in 1938 laid claim to a piece of the continent. But no Nazis chose to stay.

Today, residency in Antarctica varies from lows of 1,100 in winter to highs of 4,400 in summer. Humans live and work in 37 Antarctic bases with the largest population residing at McMurdo Station, a mere 250. The humans in Antarctica are not there to settle a continent. No one is planting roots that will then grow into a much larger human presence. The environment is unsustainable without an enormous resupply effort.

The Story of a Future Human Presence on the Moon or Mars

Antarctica is here on Earth where no one has to bring air to breathe or water to drink. And yet we cannot conquer its environment and settle there.

So why do we think the Moon or Mars presents our species with a second Earth?

States Pascal Lee, of NASA’s Ames Research Center, “there is an escapism to wanting to go to Mars and start anew….The issue with that particular enticing concept is — to go to what? You would need an entire infrastructure set up in advance to support people there.” 

Even Robert Zubrin, President of the Mars Society, and a strong advocate for going to Mars doesn’t see colonizing the Red Planet as a second Earth to ensure our species survival. Instead, he describes Mars as a springboard for scientific and engineering innovation. Zubrin states that Mars would turn us into a spacefaring species which means “we will gain greater control over our environment….essential to our long-term survival.” So Mars will make us better stewards of Earth.

But Stephen Hawking has a different opinion. Recently he announced that our species must find a new planet to inhabit or face our potential extinction. The deadline, 100 years. Feeding into this Mars or bust mindset is not something one normally associates with Professor Hawking.

But it certainly is Elon Musk‘s mantra. Musk sees humanity at risk if we remain bound to Earth. He founded SpaceX in 2002 to make us a multi-planetary species.

Antarctica, however, shows us that the Moon and Mars are no easy answer. Katharine Hayhoe, Director of the Climate Science Center, Texas Tech University, states, “Mars is not an escape hatch for planet Earth. If we do not take action to reduce and eventually eliminate our carbon emissions, they will overwhelm human civilization as we know it, long before Mars is ready to be colonized by large numbers of people.” 

Building a colony on the Moon or Mars is a thousand times more difficult and a million times more expensive than anything undertaken to date in Antarctica. So unless there is a super compelling economic reason to inhabit those two off world locales permanently, Hayhoe and many others argue that fixing Earth should be our prime directive, leaving the Moon and Mars as places like Antarctica where we can explore and do science.

NASA’s Shopping List to Sustainability for Humans on the Moon and Mars

NASA is now considering a return to the Moon in the 2020s largely driven by the new Republican administration in Washington, DC. The agency previously set a 2033 target for a crewed mission to Mars with the goal to live on the Martian surface for a few months before returning home. To achieve Mars NASA has put together a “must have” shopping list to make it possible. Here are some of NASA’s requirements:

• Development of affordable launch systems capable of putting sufficient material into space to assemble what will be needed to get to Mars and back. The Space Launch System, prohibitively expensive, is not the best answer to this problem. SpaceX reusability applied to its heavy launch Falcon may prove to be a better choice.
• Development of autonomous technology that can work without human supervision in advance of human arrival at the planet to build and maintain life support and other infrastructure. This means further advances in robotics and artificial intelligence.
• Development of space waystations as fuel depots for refueling spacecraft in transit to and from Mars. Space refueling is being tested on the International Space Station.
• Development of non-chemical propulsion that is sufficiently powerful to speed up any spacecraft with humans on board to get them to Mars faster. Nuclear propulsion may provide a solution.
• Development of heavy payload delivery systems that can land on Mars. Curiosity, the size and weight of a small car, required a complex system for getting to the planet surface with the descent described by NASA staff as “7 minutes of terror.” What is needed is retrofire systems that can guide payloads to the ground in any Martian environmental conditions.
• Improvements to navigation software and technology so that when reaching Mars, human crews can land within walking distance of the infrastructure built by the autonomous systems that preceded their arrival. Crews should move into a working habitat that is adequately supplied to sustain them.
• Improvements to communication technology not only to link Mars to Earth, but also, to ensure missions of exploration are always connected to a Martian home base regardless of environmental conditions on the planet. This means further advances in optical Deep Space communications to support in flight and on surface interaction in a timely manner.
• Development of habitats that can stand up to Mars’ conditions. On Mars, ice and Martian regolith may prove to be the primary building materials. On the Moon, the lunar regolith is the most likely primary construction material.
• Development of net-zero water and waste recycling systems to ensure short to long-term sustainability for a human crew to survive on the planet.
• Development of resource technology to harvest water, oxygen, and fuel from the air, ground and subterranean locations on Mars.
• Development of a reliable power generation technology for Mars. Photovoltaic energy harvesting on Mars may be insufficient for a human settlement. With Mars getting only half the amount of light energy from the Sun that is available to Earth, NASA doesn’t see solar power as viable for Mars. Modular nuclear power technology may provide the solution. Today modular nuclear fission technology is still in its infancy. And fusion remains a decade away before it becomes commercially viable.
• If we want to explore Mars then we will need transportation systems that can move us efficiently and quickly while withstanding a punishing environment. We can learn some things from Opportunity and Curiosity, the two working rovers. Both have metal wheels that exhibit the scars and punctures from rolling on the planet’s surface. And both move very slowly. Humans will want to get around on Mars at a pace not too different from the way they drive here on Earth.
• And finally the development of cosmic and solar radiation protection for humans traveling beyond the relatively benign nature of Earth’s immediate space. Today humans don’t venture beyond low-Earth orbit. In the Apollo program of the 1960s and 70s, the five expeditions to the Moon exposed astronaut crews to deadly cosmic radiation. Those expeditions were short in duration. A prolonged stay on the Moon would be far more dangerous. And a trip to Mars would mean exposure to radiation that would undoubtedly shorten the lives and jeopardize the health of all of its human crew.

When President Trump announced that the United States was no longer to participate in the global cause of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, I’m wondering if he thought that there will always be Mars.

Well, there won’t. We are here for the duration. Earth will remain our primary home for the foreseeable future and learning collectively to live on it sustainably should be the goal of every one of us. For humanity, Mars and the Moon are and will remain interesting places to visit and explore, just like we do today in Antarctica.

The post Easier to Fix Earth Than Find a Planet B to Colonize appeared first on Techso Mogro.

Calling it a crack is a misnomer. This is a CRAAAACCK, 450 meters (1,500 feet) wide in some places, more than 300 meters (1,000 feet) deep, and 80 kilometers (approximately 50 miles) in length and growing.

In the month of May, it added 17 kilometers (more than 10 miles) and also made a hard right turn toward the Weddell Sea.

Just how much ice is involved? 

More than 5,000 square kilometers (1,930 square miles), bigger than Rhode Island and a few hundred square kilometers short of Delaware. It is more than 10% of Larsen C. And as big as it is the berg when melted will not appreciably affect ocean sea levels.

The rift was first spotted in 2011 but the past six months have seen it lengthen and widen dramatically to the point where calving is believed to be imminent. Ice shelves on the Antarctic Peninsula in the last two decades have witnessed a number of collapses. None have produced a berg this size. Bergs shed from Antarctica’s ice shelves regularly. Some are monsters as big as Manhattan Island.

So what’s so significant about this imminent calving event?

It comes at a time when we are seeing significant evidence of warming in the Weddell Sea and the Antarctic Peninsula. Recent pictures show a greening of the landscape.

At the same time, the Weddell Sea is warming through the entire water column from surface to deep ocean. For ice shelves hanging off the continent, this contact with warmer water means melting from below and a potential reason for a shift in the ice shelf mass leading to the visible crack that now dominates Larsen C. So a field of ice that has been stable and attached to the continent for more than 10,000 years is about to lose a very large piece which is literally tipping into the sea.

Ice shelves in Antarctica play an important role in checking the flow of continental ice. Dr. Hartmut Hellmer, an oceanographer at the Alfred Wegener Institute states, “Ice shelves are like corks in the bottle for the ice streams behind them. They reduce the ice flow because they lodge in bays everywhere and rest on islands. If, however, the ice shelves melt from below, they become so thin that the dragging surfaces become smaller and the ice behind them starts to move.” In the case of Larsen C, there are no islands to lodge against. Just the open Weddell Sea.

So is Larsen C what Dr. Hellmer refers to as a cork about to be released? Not in terms of causing major continental ice movement changes. Its imminent calving may lead to the entire or a further portion of the shelf disintegrating as was seen in 2002 at Larsen B when the entire shelf collapsed.

The bigger potential problem doesn’t lie along the Antarctic Peninsula but further south where the Weddell Sea touches two much larger ice shelves, the Ronne and Filchner (see map below). These are the corks keeping the continental ice of West Antarctica in check. Should they begin to break up then scientists expect the ice behind them will begin to move to the sea leading to dramatic increases in ocean levels. We are not talking millimeters but rather meters in sea level changes.

Related articles across the web

• A huge crack in a 1,000-foot-thick Antarctic ice block has taken an alarming turn

The post The World’s Largest Iceberg is About to be Born appeared first on Techso Mogro.

December 31, 2016 – With the year coming to an end it seems appropriate to look at the issue of climate change and evidence and events we witnessed in 2016 that may be tipping points for the planet:

1. Month after month global mean temperatures setting new modern records. By modern I mean the recording of temperatures worldwide that humans have been doing continuously since 1880. Global mean temperatures when averaged out across the planet exceeded late 19th century weather records by 1.2 Celsius (2.2 Fahrenheit) degrees. Scientists when looking at this new pattern of temperatures couldn’t point to any seasonal or serial phenomena from the past that could have been causal agents. The 2015 El Nino event which petered out by mid-spring in the Northern Hemisphere didn’t do to temperatures what past incidents of mid-Pacific warming have done, that is, be followed by cooling. Instead we saw for the first time global mean temperatures continue to rise rather than fall. July was the hottest month ever recorded. August tied it. And in the last month the Arctic saw record warm temperatures that crazily persisted for days with areas just south of the North Pole warmer than Kansas City, Missouri on the same days.
2. Sea ice in the Arctic Ocean setting new records not just in extent but also in thickness. 2016 saw the second lowest amount of sea ice recorded since we began observing this phenomenon from satellite images and data collection. And while the ice coverage by September of 2016 reached its low it was also noted by native Inuit and Arctic research scientists that multi-year ice continued to disappear at rates never seen before, replaced by thinner annual sea ice. The amount of loss equaled an area the size of India.The total ice mass lost equaled 3.8 million square kilometers (1.48 million square miles). The heat wave that struck the Arctic in late November and repeated in December actually caused the seasonal regrowth of sea ice to stop and reverse.
3. Land-based ice sheets and neighbouring ice shelves in Antarctica showing evidence of warming. The Antarctic Southern Ocean’s ice coverage has largely appeared unaffected by planetary warming. In the southern continent instead manifestations warming evidence can be seen in the behaviour of the land ice and ice shelves. For example in East Antarctica at the foot of Totten Glacier its ice shelf lost close to 80 billion tons of mass with thinning close to 10 meters (32 feet). The cause, the invasion of warmer ocean water circulating under the ice shelf causing rapid melt. Another example in the Antarctic Peninsula could be seen at the Larsen C ice shelf which developed a 112 kilometer (70 mile) crack, more than one-half kilometer deep (a third of a mile), and over 90 meters (300 feet) wide. The crack is expanding and lengthening and when it reaches to its full extent will calve an iceberg as large as the state of Delaware into the Southern Ocean. Both of these changes to ice abutting the continent point to decreasing instability. Ice shelves, which are the safeguards that keep Antarctica’s ice sheets from flowing en masse into the Southern Ocean, are at risk. Now that it is summer in the Antarctic I suspect we will receive even more compelling evidence from scientists studying climate change in the southernmost continent of our planet.
4. The worst coral bleaching ever witnessed in Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. More than 90% of the reef saw bleaching events and one-third of the corals died. The damage to-date extends over 700 of the reef’s 2,300 kilometers (1,400 miles). The die off effected two-thirds of shallow-water corals over an eight month period. Was the El Nino a contributing factor? Past El Nino events have often triggered been coral bleaching. But once an El Nino ends cooler water leads to coral recovery. The difference this time has been the duration of warming which is significantly longer than past events. The northern end of the reef has experienced multiple decade damage with reef-dependent sea life including fish, crustaceans and bivalve populations expected to crash.
5. Electing a climate change denier to the position of President of the United States. Donald Trump, singlehandedly, may be the most significant climate change story of 2016. If he is true to his words, that climate change is a “hoax,” then his election, the people he appoints and the policies he enacts, could prove catastrophic. He may pull the United States, the world’s second largest greenhouse gas emitter, out of the Paris Climate Agreement. He has indicated that he wants to take the wraps off of coal mining in his country and remove the regulations that have seen utilities move away from carbon dioxide emitting fossil fuels. His cabinet and judicial appointments could kill all the American emission-cutting initiatives put in place by the previous administration as part of the country’s commitment to mitigate global warming’s impact.

Tipping points represent the unforeseen consequences of external human acts. They tend to confound and complicate already difficult issues. In some cases through counteractions we can reverse their impacts but this usually takes much more time than the amount we used to create them. In the case of point 5 one can only hope that the consequences of this one election is reversible in four years.

Related articles across the web

• The Great Barrier Reef Just Suffered Its Worst Coral Die-Off on Record
• Yes, the Arctic’s Freakishly Warm Winter is Due to Humans’ Climate Influence
• Totten, Largest Glacier in Antarctica is Melting Because of Warm Ocean Water
• The North Pole is 50 degrees warmer than usual and, um, a little damp.
• 5 disturbing climate records that were set in 2016

The post Climate Change and 2016: Tipping Points in Evidence in a Noteworthy Year appeared first on Techso Mogro.

In reconstructing global mean sea levels from past warming periods dating back 3 million years, the researchers, Robert DeConto, Geosciences Professor at University of Massachusetts-Amherst, and David Pollard, Senior Scientists, Earth and Environmental Systems Institute, Pennsylvania State University, see a disturbing picture showing sea levels 10 to 30 meters higher than the present day. The evidence can be found in sediment deposits found on the Antarctic continent‘s margins. The more recent late Pleistocene interglacial warmings provide evidence from 130,000 and 115,000 years ago. At these times sea levels were 6 to 9 meters higher than today. CO2 levels 3 million years ago were approximately 400 parts per million (similar to today), but the late Plesitocene CO2 figure is 280 parts per million and global mean temperatures were between 0 and 2 Celsius warmer at the time.

How much of this rise is attributed to Antarctica versus Greenland?

Considering the ice mass at the South Pole, Antarctica’s contribution to global mean sea level rise is much more significant. But what is the mechanism that makes Antarctica a “wild card” when talking about global warming?

It is the precarious nature of the ice shelves on the continent’s margins and their relation to the on land ice fields abutting them. A warming ocean undermines the ice shelves making them thinner. Evidence of that is visible today. When the erosion of the shelves reaches a critical point they simply collapse. We have seen evidence of this in the past two decades with ice shelves like Larson B on the Antarctic peninsula suddenly breaking up in 2002.

In addition to the warming ocean, warming atmospheric temperatures impact the ice fields. On Greenland over the last two decades warming has led to glacial lakes forming on ice field surfaces. These lakes feed streams that eventually find fissures dropping their load to the bedrock and undermining land-based ice. This has led to a number of Greenland glaciers suddenly increasing the speed of their flow and increasing the calving of ice bergs into the surrounding North Atlantic. In Antarctica the surface melt doesn’t have the same access to the Southern Ocean but it does erode ice sheets below and the margins that abut the ice shelves can be further undermined. This ultimately destabilizes the shelves holding the continental ice back from advancing into the Southern Ocean.

The authors of the study recreated the conditions of 3 million years ago as well as those of the late Pleistocene (around 128,000 years back). They did high-resolution modeling of the palaeoclimates of these two periods and then ran the models. The 3 million years ago model raised ocean sea levels by 11.3 meters just from Antarctic contributions. The late Pleistocene model produced 6 to 7.5 meter increases.

They then ran simulations 5,000 years into the future based on current and projected rises in CO2 levels and the correlated rise in atmospheric temperatures. They assumed “no ocean warming beyond 2300” maintaining stable ocean temperatures as CO2 atmospheric concentrations stabilized and began to decline. The end result indicated that until the “global ocean cools….a multi-millennial commitment to several meters of sea-level rise despite human-engineered CO2 drawdown” would persist.

The authors indicate that their model needs further refinement to incorporate the feedback mechanisms from rapid calving and ice margin collapses that could trap ice in Antarctic bays negatively impacting ice melt rates. Also the model needs to incorporate continental deformation impact, that is, the isostatic rise of Antarctica’s land mass, as the burden of ice melts from the surface causing the land to rise. This too could impact ocean sea level rises. But even without these refinements the authors point out the accuracy of the simulations of the ancient sea level events going back 3 million years.

In the conclusion they state, “ocean-driven melt is an important driver of grounding-line retreat where warm water is in contact with ice shelves, but in scenarios with high greenhouse gas emissions we find that atmospheric warming soon overtakes the ocean as the dominant driver of Antarctic ice loss. Surface meltwater may lead to the ultimate demise of the major buttressing ice shelves…..but it is the long thermal memory of the ocean that will inhibit the recovery of marine-based ice for thousands of years after greenhouse gas emissions are curtailed.”

What are the implications for human civilization living within 100 kilometers of most of the world’s oceans? The projection to the year 2500 has enormous impact on global cities. Putting it in perspective using a few select locations in the United States, it means the disappearance of Delaware, much of eastern Maryland, almost all of Manhattan and Brooklyn, Miami and Fort Lauderdale, and a significant portion of the Central Valley of California.

Which brings us to the ultimate question. Is this our inevitable future?

At COP21 the nations of the world agreed to address CO2 levels and begin transitioning to a low-carbon future. Existing damage from current CO2 levels cannot be undone for a number of centuries, but allowing CO2 levels to further escalate means real consequences for generations that follow us.

As Jake Tapper, a CNN commentator, in breaking the results of the study on his network, stated, “Your kids and your grand kids…might not be able to dream about living in New York City or Philadelphia or Washington or Miami because there might not be a New York City or Philadelphia or Washington or Miami at the turn of the century.”

The post The Antarctic Wild Card Studied in New Climate Change Research appeared first on Techso Mogro.