PowerSwitch

Anyone read David Wasdell's paper?
http://www.apollo-gaia.org/Sensitivity% ... Budget.pdf

biffvernon wrote:Anyone read David Wasdell's paper?
http://www.apollo-gaia.org/Sensitivity% ... Budget.pdf

This from near the end.

C.
An ice
-
free world and a sea
-
le
vel rise of around
120 metres are
in prospect."

That would make White River Jct. in Vermont a sea port. [/quote]

Blimey! I thought 70 metres was the all-the-ice-melts limit!

Yeah, I spotted that 120m and wondered if it were a mistake. It should, I think, be about half that.

Confusion reigns. Another book I'm reading says that if the Antarctic alone melted, sea level rise would be around 200 feet and it's a very agnostic book. Does anyone really know?

The Antarctic ice sheet is thinning at an alarming rate, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-27465050 , of course all the smoke-screen disinformative corporate propagandists will quote figures for ice sheet area instead, in language that seems authoritative. Hi Ralph

emordnilap wrote:Confusion reigns. Another book I'm reading says that if the Antarctic alone melted, sea level rise would be around 200 feet and it's a very agnostic book. Does anyone really know?

Yes, we do really know to a good level of accuracy how much sea level rise is contained in the ice sheets. This image from 2007 gives the general picture:


From: https://nsidc.org/cryosphere/sotc/sea_level.html

The red bars are the contribution to sea level rise during the 1990s, the white bars are the total volume of ice. As you can see, the small glaciers have been important - but ultimately don't contain much ice. The big sea level rise comes from Greenland and Antarctica.

Roughly speaking 360 Gt/km3 of water raises the sea by 1mm (around 400 km3 ice), so just reading from that chart we can see Antarctica's ~24x10^6 km3 / 400 = ~62m. Greenland's around 7m.

However - the vast majority of that ice isn't going to melt for many thousands of years. What's more interesting is the several metres we're likely to see from West Antarctica and Greenland over a period of several centuries.

Catweazle wrote:...of course all the smoke-screen disinformative corporate propagandists will quote figures for ice sheet area instead, in language that seems authoritative...

The common point that those with nefarious intentions make is that Antarctica's sea ice is at record extent. Of course this means nothing for sea level rise and is likely to be a symptom of ice-shelf melting. As Antarctica's ice-shelves melt, they leave a layer of cool fresh water on the surface sitting above the warmer, saltier water below. This encourages the formation of sea-ice.