Ross Ice Shelf Could Collapse With Out Warning, Worldwide sea level rise of sixteen feet

The Ross Ice Shelf, a massive piece of ice the size of France, could break off without warning causing a dramatic rise in sea levels, warn New Zealand scientists working in Antarctica.

www.nzherald.co.nz...

You would think this would be in the mainstream media if there was anything to it...but then again this is real bad thing that might actually happen...no way would they report on a real event if it were to have a posibility of occuring these days, like Huricane katerina, ha ha if you know what I mean.

Went, and told my friend, if he still wanted to live on a island to get away from modern society. "hey about that living on a island goal of yours..." lol

In January, British Antarctic Survey researchers predicted that its collapse would make sea levels rise by at least 5m, with other estimates predicting a rise of up to 17m.

Another link: www.news.com.au...

I will be looking for more.


[edit on 4-12-2006 by trIckz_R_fO_kIdz]

[edit on 4-12-2006 by trIckz_R_fO_kIdz]

Thats big, if that falls off. Makes other climate change things look small really. I don't know exactly how something that big can fall off all at the same time.

One to watch I would say, but it should be watched with caution, as look at some peoples feelings about Yellowstone's bulge in the lake. Similar sort of thing for mass panic.

thats wierd, i just watched al gores "an inconvenient truth" where he talked about this stuff.

There has been smaller peices breaking off (biggest only wieighing 500 billion tonnes) This ones BIG, people forget how much water is really in that ice, fresh water to.

thing is I think this a natural process earth goes through every so hundred thousand or million years.





google earth image i got of it.


more updated source.

www.commondreams.org...
Dec 1st.



So what are you coasters planing to do? If you live right on the coast more less then 10-20 feet I would be ready to leave the up higher ground just to be safe. It might take away for it to melt, so if it does break, get that kit and supply going asap.

[edit on 4-12-2006 by trIckz_R_fO_kIdz]

No where does it say that collapse is imminent. Please don't sensationalize. It's a double-edged sword, that sensationalized stuff is.

[edit on 4-12-2006 by sardion2000]

Well I could of said any minute now, since thats what the scienctist say. It can go any time.

I changed it to without warning, I copied the title from another forum I post on sorry, before I even read it completly lol.

[edit on 4-12-2006 by trIckz_R_fO_kIdz]

Is the Gaia Theory merely burying one’s head in the sand ostrich-like? Even if the unprovable notion - a self correcting earth - is true, the time-period over which this auto pilot correcting mechanism operates is calculated in the millions of years range. Much too long to be of any real benefit to the “let the devil take the hindmost” school of thought. We are now arguing where or when will we pass the tipping point, if we have not already done so. Even our dunderheaded designated president, Bush43, has dropped his Crawford style condescension when speaking of global warming. Well, not exactly “speaking” but more like bumbling. Fumbling. Stumbling. “As a man thinks, so he also speaks; as a man speaks, so he also thinks.”

www.nasa.gov...

en.wikipedia.org...

en.wikipedia.org...(science)



[edit on 12/4/2006 by donwhite]

Originally posted by trIckz_R_fO_kIdz
So what are you coasters planing to do? If you live right on the coast more less then 10-20 feet I would be ready to leave the up higher ground just to be safe. It might take away for it to melt, so if it does break, get that kit and supply going asap.

What to do?...nothing... because its not going to happen as "predicted"...

Global warming aside…

Hasn’t it been demonstrated that melt water from ground and ice ‘slides’ cause the real increase in ocean levels and ice burgs and ice shelves only nominally contribute to ocean level increases despite the magnitude of events? I would like to see their numbers…

Floating ice (icebergs) and ice shelves (which are attached yet still floating) only account for an overall increase near 2.5% in melt water to volume because the water volume is already being displaced by the ocean.

Here is a real event that already occurred in 2002....no (zero) increase in sea level where I have a residence (which is less than 100m from the coastline).

Larson B Shelf:
There was 'talk' at the time of a 1-2m increase in water levels becasue of this one....and it really broke-off!!. The predictions for the Larson B's ocean level increse contributions appear to be in line with the Ross "predictions" given the adjustment for their respective mass...

But the break up of the ice mass would not raise sea levels because the ice was already floating, he added. Sea levels would only be affected if the land ice behind it now began to flow more rapidly into the sea…
Larson B shelf 2002

The difference (increase) is only derived from the density differences in fresh water and salt water; the closer the two states are in composition and density the less the increase in melt water.

So, all but roughly 2.5% of the entire Ross Ice Shelf volume is already being displaced by the ocean. Big deal...


Mg

It's worth noting that in geological terms 'suddenly' means in the space of a few decades or centuries (depending how far back we're going). And the only reason it's being said it could happen again 'suddenly' is because it's happened before 'suddenly'.

And if it's happened before, I doubt there's much we can do to stop it happening again. Just as I doubt we could stop a 'super-volcano' from suddenly erupting .....

(Incidently, I think a lot of the projected sea level rise following a collapse of the Ross Sea Ice Shelf would come from subsequent discharge of landbased glaciers, which are currently held back by the ice sheet. It would be a gradual affair).

posted by missed_gear

What to do?...nothing... because its not going to happen as "predicted"...
Global warming aside . . I would like to see their numbers…

Larson B Shelf: There was 'talk' at the time of a 1-2m increase in water levels because of this one....and it really broke-off!!.

But the break up of the ice mass would not raise sea levels because the ice was already floating, he added. Sea levels would only be affected if the land ice behind it now began to flow more rapidly into the sea…

The difference (increase) is only derived from the density differences in fresh water and salt water; the closer the two states are in composition and density the less the increase in melt water. So, all but roughly 2.5% of the entire Ross Ice Shelf volume is already being displaced by the ocean. Big deal...Mg [Edited by Don W]

Using 8,000 miles (12,800 km) diameter of the Earth and 70% of the surface covered by water, and average ocean depth of 2 miles (3.2 km), we get 281 million cubic miles of water. (All but 3% is in the oceans.) At worst case scenario, if all the ice melts, it cannot increase all the water more than 3% to about 290 million cubic miles of water. Or, maybe it is as accurate to say the average depth of the oceans would rise by 3% from 10,560 feet to 10,875 feet. Which is close to 100 meters.

What effect that much extra water would have on the coastlines does not lend itself to a formula I am aware of. I’d guesstimate there is about 250,000 miles of coastline. (400,000 km).

I live in Jacksonville, FL, 20 miles inland from the Atlantic on hte St Johns River. Jax elevation is given as 7 feet above sea level.

Footnote: The volume of the earth, OTOH, is 268,082,573,106 cubic miles.
grapevine.abe.msstate.edu...


[edit on 12/4/2006 by donwhite]

serious question, because i simply dont know:

how much of this ice shelf is already in the water? is it being held up by the surrounding land mass in the bay-like area, or is it sitting in the water? i ask because the sat pics make it look as though it's already partially in the water, which leads one to believe that it wouldnt really have that large an effect on water tables (unless it drifted out of the area and melted in warmer water).

Originally posted by donwhite
Put Your House On Stilts?

I’m already on stilts, 14ft to be exact (I really dislike the stairs). Plus one can’t get insurance without building on stilts. You can still build at 11ft but at 14ft there is a sizable reduction in insurance rates.

Originally posted by donwhite
At worst case scenario, if all the ice melts, it cannot increase all the water more than 3% to about 290 million cubic miles of water.

You must be referencing as “all the ice” the entirety of the geologic ‘land’ ice in the Polar Regions. According to the NSIDC, given this same scenario, the sea level could rise 230 ft. if all the ice melted suddenly.

But again, to the topic, ice shelves contribute very minimally to increase the ocean levels as they are already suspended.

Models I have seen or read about (I’ll try to find a few) show, very basically, that with the increase in global temperatures and a melting of the Polar ice there is also an increase in the amount of moisture carried in the atmosphere….more snow in the polar regions, rain in the warmer regions etc.“re-locking” large amounts of water….slowing down the process (or as some claim restarting the process).

An example of the some theories can be found here: Modeling the Impact of AtmosphericMoisture Transport on Global Ice Volume (pdf.)


mg

Well a well timed piece of collaborating data by the looks of it, infact the Ross shelf has apparently in new research before many times disintegrated..... however what the problem is that with a global mean rise in temperature...unlike the past with just fluctuations up and down of ice ages, its difficult to see how it would actually reform or refreeze leading to a permanent change in all the land areas of the world, and affecting nearly 2/3 rds of the worlds population (who live by the coast!)

Sediments extracted from the Antarctic seafloor show the world's largest ice shelf has disintegrated and reappeared many times in the past.

"We're seeing numerous cycles of the ice shelf or ice sheet being present at the site and then being absent," said Dr Tim Naish, a palaeoclimatologist at New Zealand's Institute of Geological and Nuclear Sciences and one of the chief scientists for the Antarctica Geological Drilling project (Andrill).

"The big question is how stable is this enormous ice shelf, the Ross Ice Shelf, which is being fed by the West Antarctic Ice Sheet," said Dr Naish.

so to be honest I will take his word at it and not call earlier posters on this thread as sensationalist at all, I see it like this, avalanches always have occurred and always will... but if someone fires a gun in a prone place ...the result immediate avalanche.... which is exactly what we are doing here with global warming, but no more snow as mean temp rise = no drop in sea levels for ...well maybe ever???

This is serious full stop:

Scientists know ice shelves are the most vulnerable part of the Antarctic. On the Antarctic Peninsula, where temperatures have risen 2.5C in the past 50 years, there have been spectacular collapses such as the demise in 2002 of the Larsen B shelf.

Dr Naish explained: "One of the things we've learnt from the collapse of the ice shelves around the Antarctic Peninsula is that once the ice shelf goes, the glaciers feeding it speed up and you start to lose ice mass off the continent much faster because the ice shelves essentially buttress the glaciers that are feeding them."

see as I keep telling all and sundry FEEDBACK and causal interactions leading to further causal interactions is what people don’t quite understand about global warming and its dangers.

But said Dr Naish, "during all those natural cycles, carbon dioxide never got above 300 parts per million. So in the last 200 years, we've had this geologically unprecedented increase in CO2 - it's 30% higher than it has been over the last several million years and it's occurred at a rate we've never seen geologically."

Dr Naish muses: "If they collapsed in the past without the present level of CO2 and the Earth was two to three degrees warmer, what's going to happen with the doubling of CO2 and potentially much higher temperatures?"

BBC Source

Not at all scaremongering or alarmist just plain and simple science and the reality we observing in the world at the moment and in its past.

Regards

Elf
MischeviouslyClimbingAHillAndBuildingAFloatingHouse

Am I missing something here?

It is floating already. Exactly where is it supposed to collapse to? If they mean it will melt, it will add very little to the global sea level because it is already displacing its own mass.

It sounds more like a group of second-rate hack pseudoscientists are making 'sky-is-falling' claims to get a fat research grant. Or the media is again intentionally lying and distorting (a common media trait) to generate ratings.

In either event, I will just yawn, shrug, and move on to another topic.

dave 54

considering your affiliation to the statements of Max Plank in youir sig...you are joking right???

"We're seeing numerous cycles of the ice shelf or ice sheet being present at the site and then being absent," said Dr Tim Naish, a palaeoclimatologist at New Zealand's Institute of Geological and Nuclear Sciences and one of the chief scientists for the Antarctica Geological Drilling project (Andrill).

Source

are you totally without any comprehension of how university funding for samll phd student type research, and this sort of multidisciplinary and pan geo research calloborations work???

this guy could get like 300K a year tax free and with a sexy secretarie with any and I mean any oil company, you think he wants to be stuck on a ice shelf in the middle of nowhere away from his family on his department wage? he does it because it excites him and like any CREDIBLE scientist is searching for the truth...

yawn on mate whilst the water drowns you...please read beforew being so slippant.

I yawn at you to be honest...in that not disrespectfully but that im getting bored with one line additions that are just ego boosts and have no depth of understanding.

Regards

Elf

Originally posted by dave_54
Am I missing something here?

It is floating already. Exactly where is it supposed to collapse to? If they mean it will melt, it will add very little to the global sea level because it is already displacing its own mass.

same question i had....but it seems the self proclaimed experts here (read as "elf") would rather berate you for asking it and move into scientist mambojumbo than attempt to answer it.

Originally posted by MischeviousElf
...yawn on mate whilst the water drowns you...please read beforew being so slippant....

Since I live at an elevation of 1700 meters I will yawn at rising global sea levels whilst YOU drown.

The links you provided only reinforce my original question -- how do changes in the ice shelf translate into a 5m rise of sea level? The link does not specify.

This is media hyperbole. The global mass media has a problem with reporting on scientific studies -- they intentionally lie, distort, and fabricate the real findings to generate more profit. In nearly ever case where one reads the original research one finds the media reported it wrong.

As everyone here already knows and agrees, journalists are paid professional liars.

Good post everyone, but the Ice has been melting for a long time now. I read and heard that 1/3 of the once above sea level land on earth is now under water, which is why we are finding all these citys under water and such. There might be insane changes or weak ones, but its happen before, and can come quick or slowly, its better to be safe then sorry though, I would keep an eye on it.

Originally posted by trIckz_R_fO_kIdz
So what are you coasters planing to do? If you live right on the coast more less then 10-20 feet .......

We are at about 14 feet above sea level. We have always had our bug-out bags and other emergency goods and items in case of disaster. That's the best we can do.

BTW ... this is natural. The earth heats up and cools off and heats up ...... Everything changes. Nothing remains the same.

I'll be found fishing out my window.

these alarmist scenarios come and go. I wouldn't worry too much about the ice shelf collapsing as we are going to die thanks to a massive asteroid impact that will occur some time after that rock formation collapse in africa, resulting in a huge tidal wave in NYC. while the locals are surfing and awaiting the big asteroid hit a comet will hit, creating major environmental damage that will be reversed thanks to the arrival of planet X, which will crash into the earth in 2012.