@@So it is global warming
melting it just not the way you mean
@@Geothermal heating from the
Earth beneath the intensively studied West Antarctic Ice Sheet has been
measured for the first time ever, and been found to be *surprisingly high*
according to investigating boffins//
@@The West Antarctic sheet is
the part of the Antarctic ice cap thought to be easiest to melt and thus
worries over global warming and sea level rise lead to it being investigated
much more than other parts of the frozen austral continent// Some parts of it,
for instance the Pine Island Glacier, have appeared at times to be melting
faster and faster, though it is not clear that this is due to global warming//
@@At other times, ice loss to
the sea has appeared to slow right down//
@@Meanwhile all around the rest
of Antarctica, the extent of sea ice has been growing not shrinking, such that
there is nowadays much more Antarctic sea ice than there used to be a
circumstance which climate scientists admit has them stumped//
@@It-s all a very confusing
picture, then, and to make it worse nobody until now has had any idea how much
heat might be reaching the possibly troubled West Antarctic sheet not from the
somewhat warmer seas and atmosphere, but from the rock beneath it//
@@That uncertainty has now been
lessened somewhat, with instrumental readings from below the ice obtained and
published at last in the journal Science Advances//
@@*It is important that we get this number
right if we are going to make accurate predictions of how the West Antarctic
ice sheet will behave in the future, how much it is melting, how quickly ice
streams flow, and what the impact might be on sea level rise,* says Professor
Slawek Tulaczyk// *I waited for many years to see a directly measured value of
geothermal flux from beneath this ice sheet//*
@@Exactly what the new
geothermal heating figures mean for the forecasts remains to be seen, but it is
clear that the amount of geothermal heating is a good bit more than scientists
had thought// Some of them are still hoping that it-s a fluke result//
@@*We don-t know how localized
these warm geothermal conditions might be// This is a region where there is
volcanic activity, so this measurement may be due to a local heat source in the
crust,* says Professor Andrew Fisher//
@@If it-s not a fluke, however,
it seems pretty plain that Fisher and his colleagues will have to revise their
ideas as to how much of the West Antarctic melting is due to global warming and
how much of it would be happening anyway due to warmth from the Earth-s crust//