CWatters wrote:
> <bill.sloman@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
> news:1105006094.341736.311730@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
>>Global warming means more water gets eva****ated from the oceans, which
>>in turns leads to wilder weather.
>
>
> The biggest concern at the moment seems to be a possible large and
sudden
> rise in sea level due to _melting_ at the poles. The resulting rise in
sea
> level could mean some prime real estate is under water within 80 years.
Your
> children better watch out where they buy a house or expect to see it's
value
> fall.
>
> http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/03/020329072043.htm
>
> Quote: The West Antarctic ice sheet is thought to be potentially
unstable,
> and if it collapsed sea levels around the world would rise almost 20
feet.
> The melting of the larger and more stable East Antarctic ice sheet would
> raise Earth's sea levels another 200 feet.
>
> Think it won't happen?
>
> In January 1995 around 2000 square kilometers of the Larsen Ice sheet
broke
> up....
>
> http://nsidc.org/iceshelves/larsen1995/
>
> "Two dramatic events occurred in the Larsen Ice Shelf in late January of
> 1995. A large iceberg (70 km by 25 km) calved from the shelf between
Jason
> Peninsula and Robertson Island (see map), and the northernmost part of
the
> shelf, north of Seal Nunataks, disintegrated. The large iceberg calving
> event received the most notice in popular media coverage but such events
are
> part of the normal mass balance cycle for ice shelves. The northern
> disintegration, on the other hand, occurred in an unprecedented manner,
by
> the sudden break-up of a region approximately 2000 km2 into many small
> icebergs (typically 1 to 2 km or smaller). It is the more likely of the
two
> events to be related to climate change."
>
>
I saw a NOVA on PBS once about icebergs and the polar flows. Very
fascinating stuff. As the water at the poles is frozen out of the
ocean, large amounts of salt precipitate out. This salt flows down the
ocean floor along channels which have been worn away over the
millennia. This salt ends up at the equator, where centrifugal force
mixes the salt with the water again and it heads back to the poles.
Apparently this cycle takes a few thousand years.
With less ice at the poles, the ocean's salt flows will slow and its
salinity will drop. Who knows what that will do?
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