Researchers have now pointed out that warm ocean water and not warm air, is responsible for the melting of Pine Island Glacier's floating ice shelf.
Sridhar Anandakrishnan, professor of geosciences, Pennsylvania State University, said that they've been dumping heat into the atmosphere for years and the oceans have been doing their job, taking it out of the air and into the ocean.
Advertisement
He said that eventually, with all that atmospheric heat, the oceans will heat up.
The researchers looked at the remote Pine Island Glacier, a major outlet of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, as it has rapidly thinned and accelerated in the recent past.
Pine Island Glacier or PIG lies far from McMurdo base, the usual location of American research in Antarctica.
The ice shelf is melting more rapidly from below for a number of reasons.
The oceans are warmer than they have been in the past and water can transfer more heat than air. More importantly, the terrain beneath the ice shelf is a series of channels. The floating ice in the channel has ample room beneath it for ocean water to flow in.
The water melts some of the ice beneath and cools. If the water remained in the channel, the water would eventually cool to a point where it was not melting much ice, but the channels allow the water to flow out to the open ocean and warmer water to flow in, again melting the ice shelf from beneath.
The researchers believe that the interaction of the ocean beneath the ice shelf and melting of the ice shelf is an important variable that should be incorporated into the sea level rise models of global warming.
The study has been published in Science.
Source: ANI
Advertisement
Pine Island Glacier or PIG lies far from McMurdo base, the usual location of American research in Antarctica.
The ice shelf is melting more rapidly from below for a number of reasons.
The oceans are warmer than they have been in the past and water can transfer more heat than air. More importantly, the terrain beneath the ice shelf is a series of channels. The floating ice in the channel has ample room beneath it for ocean water to flow in.
The water melts some of the ice beneath and cools. If the water remained in the channel, the water would eventually cool to a point where it was not melting much ice, but the channels allow the water to flow out to the open ocean and warmer water to flow in, again melting the ice shelf from beneath.
The researchers believe that the interaction of the ocean beneath the ice shelf and melting of the ice shelf is an important variable that should be incorporated into the sea level rise models of global warming.
The study has been published in Science.
Source: ANI
Advertisement
Advertisement
|
Advertisement
Recommended Readings
Latest Lifestyle and Wellness News
Amid the challenges of caring for newborns and toddlers, a study notes a rising trend of new parents seeking social media's help for managing their children.
Lack of friends and family visits is tied to a 39% increased risk of mortality that can be used to develop effective therapies associated with social isolation.
Compared to wearing sun-protective clothes and avoiding the sun, using sunscreen is the least effective way to prevent sunburn on the skin.
Bacterial diversity in the human gut is benefited by eating fruit and vegetables with microorganisms of probiotic and health-promoting characteristics.
New research challenges the common notion that couples achieve better weight loss results.