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El Niño tied to melting of Antarctica’s Pine Island Glacier

By Guest PostJanuary 6, 2014Environmentalfred wegener institute, antarctic ice sheet, Antarctica, british antarctic survey, climate condition, computer model, el niño, eric steig, floating ice shelf, Germany, jen de rydt, korea, ocean circulation, paul holland, pierre dutrieux, pine island glacier, qinghua ding, topography, tropical pacific ocean, university of washington, warming global oceans

Pine Island Glacier is one of the biggest routes for ice to flow from Antarctica into the sea. The floating ice shelf at the glacier’s tip has been melting and thinning for the past four decades, causing the glacier to speed up and discharge more ice.

Understanding this ice shelf is a key for predicting sea-level rise in a warming world. A paper published Jan. 2 in the advance online version of the journal Science shows that the ice shelf melting depends on the local wind direction, which is tied to tropical changes associated with El Niño. (more…)

Recent Antarctic climate, glacier changes at the ‘upper bound’ of normal

By Guest PostMay 15, 2013Environmentantarctic glaciers, antarctic peninsula, antarctic warming, Antarctica, climate change, dark layer, eric steig, glaciers, global warming, human caused warming, ice core, ice sheet divide, icy continent, isotope oxygen 18, oxygen 16, qinghua ding, rapid ice loss, sea-level rise, south america, temperature, tropical pacific ocean, university of washington, upper bound, volcanic ash, west antarctic

In the last few decades, glaciers at the edge of the icy continent of Antarctica have been thinning, and research has shown the rate of thinning has accelerated and contributed significantly to sea level rise.

New ice core research suggests that, while the changes are dramatic, they cannot be attributed with confidence to human-caused global warming, said Eric Steig, a University of Washington professor of Earth and space sciences. (more…)

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El Niño tied to melting of Antarctica’s Pine Island Glacier

Recent Antarctic climate, glacier changes at the ‘upper bound’ of normal