
What it means when a huge Antarctic glacier is unstable - Jaruzel
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/10/21/scientists-just-showed-what-it-truly-means-when-a-huge-antarctic-glacier-is-unstable/?utm_term=.3c2b1868f451
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hammock
Was hoping there would be visual of an unstable glacier, not just text about
sea level rise.

If you have never seen a glacier calve before, check out these videos:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hC3VTgIPoGU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hC3VTgIPoGU)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RL3EjH9-WSs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RL3EjH9-WSs)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1s5-IvHVDqg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1s5-IvHVDqg)

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yig
No penguins for scale :(

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harlanlewis
Near the end of the first video they overlay an image of Manhattan for scale.
Penguins would be invisible - some of those chunks are as wide as the borough!
Boggling.

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hyperion2010
This touches on one of most concerning questions about climate change. The
entire west Antarctic ice sheet is predicted to raise sea levels by 16 feet in
the northern hemisphere when it collapses [0]. 16 feet is enough to shut every
working port in the world. What is the minimum time such a collapse would
take? I have a feeling that most labs that model this stuff simply do not
publish the minimum (worst case) numbers because no one would believe how
quickly globalization could come to a screeching halt.

0\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Antarctic_Ice_Sheet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Antarctic_Ice_Sheet)

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sqeaky
Lets play with some hypotheticals...

If this happened in a day it would be complete pandemonium. Probably the
collapse of globalization as we know it. But Humanity would survive and
eventually rebuild.

If this happened in a century it would be gradual enough that republicans
could keep denying as they sign the Tulsa/Denver/Omaha International port
creation act of 2116.

A decade would be undeniable and would have costs both in life and money. What
would those costs really look like? Would we evacuate and build new ports fast
enough to keep something that looks like the modern system?

What does this look like in a single gradual year? Port takes time to open and
people take time to evacuate. Would the population of New Orleans become
residents in a suburb of Omaha on the Bay of Texas? Or could we muster
something halfway organized?

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afterburner
The rise we're afraid of is around 4 meters. What you're hypothesizing is
several hundred meters.

[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2d/USA_topo...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2d/USA_topo_en.jpg)

~~~
sqeaky
The Bay of Texas reaching Omaha was Hyberbole. The concept of a bay of Texas
after a 4 meter rise in see level is reasonable. I just didn't think the
specific location of the refugee camp mattered for high level discussion so
rather than get lost in the details of Texas geography I picked something
exaggerated but readily known to be inland: Omaha Nebraska.

~~~
afterburner
No, the concept of a bay of Texas is _not_ reasonable after a 4m rise. Believe
it or not the coast rises pretty fast from the coastline. Here, play around
with this: [http://geology.com/sea-level-rise/](http://geology.com/sea-level-
rise/)

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irrational
Let's say both of these glaciers let loose tomorrow. If I was at the beach on
the Oregon or Washington coast, how long would it take before I noticed the
three foot rise they are predicting? Days, weeks, years?

~~~
Someone
The numbers are for the ice sheet dropping into the ocean and melting
completely. So, it would be quite a while before you got the last 10% of the
sea level rise.

The first 90%, on the other hand, could get there fast. I guess this would
cause waves that travel at speeds similar to those of seismic waves (hundreds
of km/hour). So, within a day. Also, the initial ocean rise would be higher
than what it would be once the water has calmed down.

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carapace
The melting doesn't matter, just whether the ice is on land or in the ocean.

(H2O actually contracts slightly when it melts.)

~~~
Someone
Oops. Thanks.

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sampo
There is a captivating, not very long, scifi novel _The Sands of Sarasvati_
(by Finnish scifi author Risto Isomäki) related to this topic.

Unfortunately Amazon seems to only have it in German ( _Die Schmelze_ , kindle
and paper) and in Spanish ( _El deshielo_ , paper only). So for English, one
would need to order a papercopy from a Finnish bookstore.

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mturmon
More on the NSF/UK Antarctic field campaign this press release is tied to:
[http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/10/us-and-uk-plan-
thwait...](http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/10/us-and-uk-plan-thwaites-
invasion-antarctica)

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DavidWanjiru
I've never understood, is an Antarctica glacier (or polar ice caps) melting
akin to adding ice cubes to a glass of water, or is it akin to ice cubes
already in the glass melting? Ice caps on mountain tops melting are clearly
akin to the former, but what about ice that's in the water anyway?

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detaro
Sea ice melting doesn't change the sea levels, but Antarctica is a land mass
with ice on it (and of course ice around it in the water), not just a massive
chunk of floating ice.

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astrodust
Sea ice melting does expose bare ocean to more solar heating. Ice is a pretty
good insulator, and it's also white which reflects a ton of light. Dark oceans
absorb solar energy very well, there's nowhere else for it to go.

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Gravityloss
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nOZwCitHgg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nOZwCitHgg)

I hope someone could make some kind of an interactive game about the glacier
mechanics, since it's very non-linear and thus hard to fathom.

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odammit
Very uncool.

