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Frozen Peril: The West Antarctic Ice Sheet - Robert Bindschadler Ice sheets of this type have a history of not disappearing quietly but collapsing suddenly, forcing coastlines rapidly inland as their frozen mass is discharged into the oceans. The internal clock of the West Antarctic ice sheet may be rousing this frozen mass from a slumber of thousands of years, just as warmer atmospheric temperatures have begun to deliver a thicker cloak of snow. Ice sheets and their smaller glacier relatives serve as huge freshwater reservoirs that control the amount of water in the ocean and the positions of saltwater coastlines throughout the world. www.worldandi.com /specialreport/1995/april/Sa12822.htm   (291 words)

New concerns on the stability of the west Antarctic ice sheet The glaciers that used to feed Larsen A ice shelf have accelerated threefold after the collapse of the ice shelf, suggesting that the ice shelves have a critical role in restraining the flow of the inland ice. This ice sheet is a fraction of the size of the dominating east Antarctic ice sheet, but its mass is still great enough to raise global sea-level by five meters. Ice streams in the Ross Sea sector are slowing down while the glaciers in the Weddell Sea are in near steady state. www.environmenttimes.net /article.cfm?pageID=4   (902 words)

Antarctic ice sheet, 01-28-02 Antarctica's huge ice sheets are fed by snow falling in the interior of the continent. The West Antarctic ice sheet is considered less stable than the larger East Antarctic ice sheet because much of it rests on land that is below sea level, and parts of it, called ice shelves, are floating on the sea. Ice streams are fast-moving currents of ice within the ice sheet that carry large volumes of ice out onto the floating ice shelves. www.ucsc.edu /currents/01-02/01-28/antarctica.html   (553 words)

West Antarctic Ice Sheet - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Away from the interior, the ice is channelled into anomalously fast-flowing ice streams, transporting ice from the center of the continent to the sea. The inter-stream ridges are frozen to the bed while the bed beneath the ice streams consists of water-saturated clay. In January 2006, in a UK government-commissioned report, the head of the British Antarctic Survey, Chris Rapley, warned that this huge west Antarctic ice sheet may be starting to disintegrate, an event that could raise sea levels by at least 16 feet. en.wikipedia.org /wiki/West_Antarctic_Ice_Sheet   (1029 words)

Antarctic ice sheet decline startles scientists | Special reports | Guardian Unlimited "The overall balance of the Antarctic ice is dependent on regional changes in the interior and those in the coastal areas," she said. Previous studies have shown that the glaciers on the Antarctic peninsula, which sticks out from the West Antarctic ice sheet towards Argentina, began melting rapidly after the collapse of the Larsen B ice shelf in 2002. The change in Antarctic ice mass is hard to measure because of the size and complexity of the ice sheets. www.guardian.co.uk /antarctic/story/0,,1722581,00.html   (745 words)

Antarctic ice sheet is an 'awakened giant' - earth - 02 February 2005 - New Scientist The massive west Antarctic ice sheet, previously assumed to be stable, is starting to collapse, scientists warned on Tuesday. Glaciers on the Antarctic peninsula, which protrudes from the continent to the north, were already known to be retreating. The last report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, published in 2001, said that collapse of this ice sheet was unlikely during the 21st century. www.newscientist.com /article.ns?id=dn6962   (552 words)

David Suzuki Foundation: Climate Change: Science: Collapsing Ice Sheets Although it was historically understood that these ice sheets were stable over long time periods, as scientists learn more about them it is becoming clear that ice sheets - like many other components of the Earth system - are capable of rapid change. The three major ice sheets are the East Antarctic, West Antarctic and Greenland. The East Antarctic Ice Sheet is extremely thick, and frozen solidly to a dry base. www.davidsuzuki.org /Climate_Change/Impacts/Collapsing_Ice_Sheets.asp   (757 words)

Geotimes - December 2004 - Antarctic ice connections Ice shelves are the floating seaward tongues of glaciers. Along the west coast of Antarctica, multiple glaciers from the West Antarctic ice sheet feed small ice shelves in the Amundsen Sea. If the ice shelves were removed, “we might have a situation where [the glaciers] could go many times faster than they go now,” Thomas says, moving the ice out to sea. www.agiweb.org /geotimes/dec04/NN_AntarcticIce.html   (715 words)

The Antarctic ice sheet and rising sea levels   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-03) The contribution to sea level rise of ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland over this period is not well established and is subject of conflicting assessments, but it could account for around one third of the present rate of sea level rise which is ~2 mm per annum. New snow is constantly added to the ice sheet as snowfall, and ice is constantly being lost through, direct melting into the seas, a small amount of runoff during periods of summer melt, and the calving of icebergs. A decade of satellite measurements of the ice sheet surface in West Antarctica have shown that the portion of the ice sheet that drains into the Amundsen Sea is thinning at rates of several centimetres to several metres per year. www.antarctica.ac.uk /Key_Topics/IceSheet_SeaLevel/index.html   (1176 words)

Fact Sheet: Ice Shelves The West Sheet is somewhat smaller and very much younger; it is about one fifth the total mass of the East, and it is largely below sea level. During normal years, the total mass of calvings is an extremely small percentage of the ice cap, and the ice lost through calving equals the mass of snowfall on the continent. Three more shelves, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the University of Colorado, have receded past a "point of no return." These three are the Larsen B, the Wilkins, and the George VI Ice Shelves. www.asoc.org /general/iceshelve.htm   (995 words)

West Antarctic ice sheet is thickening - 17 January 2002 - New Scientist Tech The giant West Antarctic ice sheet, long the subject of warnings about its continuous melting and collapse, is actually getting thicker in parts. That is a dramatic change in an ice sheet covering about a third of West Antarctica and that has retreated nearly 1300 kilometres since the end of the last ice age. The ice is a kilometre thick, so "it would take thousands of years for surface temperature to affect the bed of the ice stream," he told New Scientist. www.newscientisttech.com /article/dn1806   (506 words)

CNN - West Antarctic ice sheet not in jeopardy - December 1, 1998 The ice sheet is the largest grounded repository of ice on the planet and some scientists caught up in the debate over global warming have argued that the melting of this ice sheet would lead to a dramatic rise in sea levels. While the scientists generally agree that global warming is occurring, their study suggests that it is not having an effect on the Antarctic ice sheet. While the researchers had to devise new algorithms to decipher the raw, ice sheet data and correct for several variables such as radar penetration below the ice surface and snow accumulation, they say the study represents the longest time series for which data is available. www.cnn.com /TECH/science/9812/01/icesheet.yoto/index.html   (640 words)

ScienceDaily: Satellite Laser To Take The Pulse Of West Antarctic Ice Sheet Ice sheet -- An Ice sheet is a mass of glacier ice that covers surrounding terrain and is greater than 50,000 square kilometers (19,305 square miles). Ice shelf -- An ice shelf is a thick, floating platform of ice that forms where a glacier or ice sheet flows down to a coastline and onto the ocean surface, typically in Antarctica or Greenland. Ice age -- An ice age is a period of long-term downturn in the temperature of Earth's climate, resulting in an expansion of the continental ice sheets, polar ice sheets and mountain glaciers ("glaciation"). www.sciencedaily.com /releases/1999/02/990224073448.htm   (2222 words)

West Antarctic Ice Sheets, Schema-Root news   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-03) The scientific evidence is compelling - the Greenland Icecap, the West Antarctic Ice Sheet and mountain glaciers are melting rapidly. Then known as the Antarctic Ice Borehole Probe, it studied ice streams in West Antarctica, the Amery ice shelf in East Antarctica and the Rutford ice stream... GRACE earlier this year showed Greenland's massive ice sheet is melting much quicker than estimated and that the Antarctic ice sheet was shrinking significantly... schema-root.org /region/antarctica/ice_sheets/west   (1067 words)

Green Car Congress: Antarctic Ice Sheet Losing Mass A study by University of Colorado at Boulder researchers has determined that the Antarctic ice sheet, which harbors 90 percent of Earth’s ice, has lost significant mass in recent years—most of it from the West Antarctic ice sheet. Ice shelves on the peninsula—which has warmed by an average of 4.5 degrees Fahrenheit in the past 60 years—have decreased by more than 5,200 square miles in the past three decades. The melting of the West Antarctic ice sheet alone—which is about eight times smaller in volume than the East Antarctic ice sheet—would raise global sea levels by more than 20 feet, according to researchers from the British Antarctic Survey. www.greencarcongress.com /2006/03/antarctic_ice_s.html   (831 words)

BBC News | SCI/TECH | Ice 'thickens' in West Antarctica While the East Antarctic Ice Sheet is considered relatively safe, there have been fears that climate change could cause the WAIS to disintegrate, raising global sea levels by as much as five metres. Most researchers are agreed that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet has been retreating over the last 10,000 years, but the new findings, published in the journal Science, could be evidence that that this trend is about to be reversed. Most of the growth is on an ice sheet called ice Stream C. "The ice sheet has been retreating for the last few thousand years, but we think the end of this retreat has come," says Dr Joughin. news.bbc.co.uk /1/hi/sci/tech/1766064.stm   (449 words)

ScienceDaily: Scientists Detect Thickening Of West Antarctic Ice Sheet West Antarctic Ice Sheet May Be A Smaller Source Of Current Sea-Level Rise (December 28, 2000) -- The West Antarctic Ice Sheet's contribution to global sea-level rise may be much slower today than it was in the past. Antarctic Ice Shelf Retreats Happened Before (February 28, 2005) -- The retreat of Antarctic ice shelves is not new according to research published this week (24 Feb) in the journal Geology by scientists from Universities of Durham, Edinburgh and British Antarctic... Antarctic Ice Sheet Losing Mass, Says University Of Colorado Study (March 2, 2006) -- University of Colorado at Boulder researchers have used data from a pair of NASA satellites orbiting Earth in tandem to determine that the Antarctic ice sheet, which harbors 90 percent of Earth's... www.sciencedaily.com /releases/2002/01/020130074839.htm   (1858 words)

What Is Happening to the West Antarctic Ice Sheet? The size of the ice sheet depends on snow accumulation, wind-driven reduction of glacial snow and ice, iceberg splitting, and subglacial melting and freezing. Retreating West Antarctic ice exposed the floor of the Ross Sea to examination by marine geologists. Ice coring at Siple Dome, begun in late 1997, is expected to contribute a detailed historical record of atmospheric chemistry and surface elevation. www.agu.org /sci_soc/articles/bind.html   (2005 words)

Ice Core Indicates West Antarctic Ice Has Thinned Less Than Believed But in a new study led by University of Washington researchers, an ice core of 1,000 meters was used as a sort of dipstick to show that a key section of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet probably never contained as much ice as scientists originally thought it did. Part of the puzzle has been whether the ice streams were flowing, whether they carried interior ice to the ice shelf at the end of the last ice age, and whether they began where they do now or receded along with the ice shelf's grounding line. An ice sheet with such a low profile and gradual decline would have had to have a very slippery bed to maintain its continuous flow, Waddington said, and it appears the ice flowed vigorously despite being relatively thin. www.spacedaily.com /news/iceage-05j.html   (878 words)

West Antarctic Ice Sheet Research   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-03) If the entire ice sheet was to collapse, sea level would rise 5-6 meters (about 20 feet). Scientists believe that all marine-based ice sheets may be unstable; all other marine-based ice sheets have melted since the lastmajor ice age. While there, we will be making three types of measurements to help us better understand the motion of the ice streams, their history, and what the conditions are like at the bottom of the ice sheet inthese areas. itll.colorado.edu /ITLL/Templates/AntarcticResearch/Research/index.html   (452 words)

Antarctic ice sheet - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia The Antarctic ice sheet is the largest single mass of ice on Earth. Around 90 percent of the fresh water on the Earth's surface is held in the ice sheet, an amount equivalent to 70 m of water in the world's oceans. Ice enters the sheet through snow and frost and leaves by calving of icebergs and melting, usually at the base but also sometimes at the surface at warm sites en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Antarctic_ice_sheet   (300 words)

Threat Of 16 Ft. Rise In Sea Levels West Antarctic Ice Sheet Could Collapse Researchers from the Cambridge-based British Antarctic Survey (BAS) have discovered that a massive Antarctic ice sheet previously assumed to be stable may be starting to disintegrate, a conference on climate change heard yesterday. Antarctica as a whole is a land covered by very thick ice, but the ice sheet covering the eastern half of the continent is very stable as it sits on rocks that are well above sea level. In some circumstances, it was feared, such as a melting of the edge of the ice sheet from rising temperatures, sea water could get under it and eventually lead to its collapse. www.rense.com /general62/rise.htm   (812 words)

Study Reveals Complex Changes In West Antarctic Ice Streams Early results of the study clearly show that all the ice streams of the WAIS have changed substantially in the last five years, but each in its own way, explained Bea Csatho, research scientist at Ohio State's Byrd Polar Research Center (BPRC) and head of the calibration project. ICESat is designed to detect changes in ice sheet surface elevation as small as 1.5 centimeters (0.6 inches) per year over areas that measure 100 kilometers by 100 kilometers (62 miles by 62 miles). Ice streams are currents of ice flowing within a larger mass of ice. researchnews.osu.edu /archive/icecalli1.htm   (1233 words)

New structure found deep within West Antarctic Ice Sheet Ice sheets normally consist of flat layers of ice, so finding this huge fold was a complete surprise. The ice sheet slowly moves towards the coast, eventually breaking away as icebergs which gradually melt into the sea. If the ice sheet does collapse, it is more likely to be part of a natural collapse cycle, or as a response to climatic change that occurred many thousands of years ago, rather than a response to current climatic change. www.physorg.com /news1282.html   (674 words)

The Antarctic Sun: Icestreams-t Parts of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet are already slipping to the sea at an accelerated rate in part because of the slick surface below. Moving an average 50 to 100 meters per year, ice streams are significant to researchers studying the West Antarctic Ice Sheet because faster-flowing ice can act as indicators to larger glacial patterns. Ice needs more force to move over rough bedrock, just like sanding wood, said Hamilton, who is mostly interested in knowing what holds the ice sheet back. antarcticsun.usap.gov /oldissues2002-2003/Sun112402/icestreams-t.html   (1072 words)

USATODAY.com - Researchers find Antarctic ice is thickening   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-03) WASHINGTON (AP) — New measurements show the ice in West Antarctica is thickening, reversing some earlier estimates that the sheet was melting. But new flow measurements for the Ross ice streams, using special satellite-based radars, indicate that movement of some of the ice streams has slowed or halted, allowing the ice to thicken, according to a paper in the Jan. 18 issue of the journal Science. In their paper, Joughin and Tulaczyk suggest the West Antarctic ice streams may be undergoing the same transition from shrinking to growing that appears to have occurred on a neighboring stream 150 years ago. www.usatoday.com /news/science/cold-science/2002-01-18-wais-thicker.htm   (436 words)

Global Sea Level Rise Forecast to Flood Low-Lying Coastlines At the Royal Society in London, the Antarctic climate scientists are examining the latest evidence for climate change on the icy continent and its effects on the southern ice sheet, at a two day scientific meeting that winds up today. Rignot is a principal investigator on NASA funded projects to study the mass balance of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets using radar interferometry combined with other methods; the interactions of ice shelves with the ocean; and the retreat of Patagonian glaciers. But some scientists have suggested that overall annual snowfalls on the Antarctic ice sheet appear roughly to be balanced by the loss of ice due to melting or the breakup into icebergs. www.ens-newswire.com /ens/oct2005/2005-10-18-02.asp   (1076 words)

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