Saturday, September 15, 2007

 

South Pole Colder


We have different conditions at the North and South Poles. The North is a sea surrounded by land and the South is land surrounded by sea. The South is much colder than the North because of this difference in configuration, as sea currents mitigate the extremes of heat and cold. Of course sea ice (which is usually only 4 feet thick) extends farther and farther out to sea in the winter and melts away in the summer. In the South just now, at the end of winter there, the ring of sea ice is at its greatest extent since satellite measurements began in 1979. It's also colder in the southern interior and getting colder. So if the melting of sea ice in the North is proof of global warming, what then is the growing of sea ice in the South? Chopped liver?

It's getting tougher and tougher even to sell a global warming scenario when Antarctica and the sea around it refuse to co-operate. And if you can't show that it's warming globally, though indeed to sell the idea that increased man made CO2 is doing anything at all.

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Comments:
Rog,

So those pieces of ice the size of RI that keep breaking off the Antarctic ice shelves are doing so b/c it's getting colder?

T
 
No, lots of the Larson Ice shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula has been breaking off and floating away to melt because the Antarctic Peninsula has, for reasons largely unknown, been getting a lot warmer while the rest of Antarctica gets colder. Still doesn't sound exactly global to me.
 
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