Emperor penguins in Antarctica threatened by melting sea ice.....But Antarctic sea ice at record level.

Emperor penguins in Antarctica threatened by melting sea ice.......But Antarctic sea ice at record level. HT: NewIceAge.

Warning comes even as Antarctic sea ice hits second all-time record in a week.

Unfortunately, lies like this seem to flourish in today’s world.

According to this Danish website, “The population of emperor penguins in Antarctica will fall significantly at the end of this century because of global warming will reduce the sea ice around Antarctica, predicts an international research team.”

A 50-year field study of a colony of emperor penguins in Terre Adéliein East Antarctica showed that breeding pairs of emperor penguins were very exposed when the sea ice disappears, the article moans.
Mathematical models developed by researchers from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts paint a somewhat bleak picture for the Emperor penguin’s future, the article continues.

Two-thirds of the colonies could be reduced by more than 50 percent within a hundred years.

It then quotes Professor Jens-Christian Svenning from the Department of Bioscience at Aarhus University as to why sea ice disappearance is a threat to the emperor penguins:

“When sea ice melts, then lose emperor penguins also a major source of food in the form of krill, small shrimp-like animals that graze on algae and bacteria that grows under the sea ice. Krill are important to the food chain in Antarctica because the fish feed on them, and the fish themselves are an important food source for, among other emperor penguins. So when the sea ice thinned out and disappear, lose emperor penguins an important food source, “said Jens-Christian Svenning.

Well, yes, professor Svenning, a lack of sea ice might threaten the penguins … when it melts, if it melts.

But the fact is, professor, that Antarctic sea ice extent has been growing by leaps and bounds.

Why does no one mention the fact that Antarctic sea ice has been growing since satellite records began?

Why does no one mention the that Antarctic sea ice just  hit its second all-time record in a week?

It's official: East Antarctica is pushing West Antarctica around.

It's official: East Antarctica is pushing West Antarctica around, East Antarctica is sliding sideways.(TGDaily).

Now that West Antarctica is losing weight–that is, billions of tons of ice per year–its softer mantle rock is being nudged westward by the harder mantle beneath East Antarctica. 

The discovery comes from researchers led by The Ohio State University, who have recorded GPS measurements that show West Antarctic bedrock is being pushed sideways at rates up to about twelve millimeters–about half an inch–per year. 

This movement is important for understanding current ice loss on the continent, and predicting future ice loss. They reported the results on Thursday, Dec. 12 at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco. Half an inch doesn’t sound like a lot, but it’s actually quite dramatic compared to other areas of the planet, explained Terry Wilson, professor of earth sciences at Ohio State. Wilson leads POLENET, an international collaboration that has planted GPS and seismic sensors all over the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. She and her team weren’t surprised to detect the horizontal motion. After all, they’ve been using GPS to observe vertical motion on the continent since the 1990′s. They were surprised, she said, to find the bedrock moving towards regions of greatest ice loss. ‘From computer models, we knew that the bedrock should rebound as the weight of ice on top of it goes away,” Wilson said.

“But the rock should spread out from the site where the ice used to be. Instead, we see movement toward places where there was the most ice loss.” The seismic sensors explained why. By timing how fast seismic waves pass through the earth under Antarctica, the researchers were able to determine that the mantle regions beneath east and west are very different. West Antarctica contains warmer, softer rock, and East Antarctica has colder, harder rock. Stephanie Konfal, a research associate with POLENET, pointed out that where the transition is most pronounced, the sideways movement runs perpendicular to the boundary between the two types of mantle. 

She likened the mantle interface to a pot of honey. “If you imagine that you have warm spots and cold spots in the honey, so that some of it is soft and some is hard”” Konfal said, “and if you press down on the surface of the honey with a spoon, the honey will move away from the spoon, but the movement won’t be uniform.The hard spots will push into the soft spots. And when you take the spoon away, the soft honey won’t uniformly flow back up to fill the void, because the hard honey is still pushing on it.” 

Or, put another way, ice compressed West Antarctica’s soft mantle. Some ice has melted away, but the soft mantle isn’t filling back in uniformly, because East Antarctica’s harder mantle is pushing it sideways. 

The crust is just along for the ride. This finding is significant, Konfal said, because we use these crustal motions to understand ice loss. “We’re witnessing expected movements being reversed, so we know we really need computer models that can take lateral changes in mantle properties into account.” Wilson said that such extreme differences in mantle properties are not seen elsewhere on the planet where glacial rebound is occurring. “We figured Antarctica would be different,” she said. “We just didn’t know how different.” Hmmm......Now this was something i was wondering about for a long time, guess we got the answer now.

Navy Commander: Iran Eyeing Presence in Antarctica.

Navy Commander: Iran Eyeing Presence in Antarctica.(Fars)."We have the capability to hoist Iran's flag in different regions from the North Pole to the South Pole," Sayyari said in a TV program aired on the occasion of the start of the Sacred Defense Week, commemorating Iranians' sacrifices during the 8 years of the Iraqi imposed war on Iran in 1980s. "We have had coordination with the Oceanography Organization, and we are planning presence near the Antarctica," the commander said, stressed Iran's right to have presence in high seas. Last month, Managing-Director of Iran's National Institute for Oceanography (INIO) Vahid Chegini said the country is building an oceangoing research vessel to conduct exploratory missions in the South Pole. Chegini told FNA that 35% of the construction phase of the 50-meter long oceangoing research vessel has so far been completed. He added that the Defense Industries Organization of the Iranian ministry of defense has started construction of the vessel since spring 2011. He stated that body of the vessel is made of steel and will be built by November 2012.Read the full story here.

Destabilization: Scientists discover new unstable region the size of New Jersey under Antarctica Ice Sheet.

Destabilization: Scientists discover new unstable region the size of New Jersey under Antarctica Ice Sheet.(UTA).May 10, 2012 – ANTARTICA - Using ice-penetrating radar instruments flown on aircraft, a team of scientists from the U.S. and U.K. have uncovered a previously unknown sub-glacial basin nearly the size of New Jersey beneath the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) near the Weddell Sea. The location, shape and texture of the mile-deep basin suggest that this region of the ice sheet is at a greater risk of collapse than previously thought. Team members at The University of Texas at Austin compared data about the newly discovered basin to data they previously collected from other parts of the WAIS that also appear highly vulnerable, including Pine Island Glacier and Thwaites Glacier. Although the amount of ice stored in the new basin is less than the ice stored in previously studied areas, it might be closer to a tipping point. “If we were to invent a set of conditions conducive to retreat of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, this would be it,” said Don Blankenship, senior research scientist at The University of Texas at Austin’s Institute for Geophysics and co-author on the new paper. “With its smooth bed that slopes steeply toward the interior, we could find no other region in West Antarctica more poised for change than this newly discovered basin at the head of the Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf. The only saving grace is that losing the ice over this new basin would only raise sea level by a small percentage of the several meters that would result if the entire West Antarctic Ice Sheet destabilized.”
The study’s co-authors also included Duncan Young, research scientist associate at the Institute for Geophysics. The study, published this week in the journal Nature Geoscience, was carried out in a collaboration led by the University of Edinburgh with the British Antarctic Survey and the Universities of Aberdeen, Exeter and York, as well as The University of Texas at Austin. “This is a significant discovery in a region of Antarctica that at present we know little about,” said Professor Martin Siegert of the University of Edinburgh, who led the project. “The area is on the brink of change, but it is impossible to predict what the impact of this change might be without further work enabling better understanding of how the West Antarctic Ice Sheet behaves.” The seaward edge of the newly discovered basin lies just inland of the ice sheet’s grounding line, where streams of ice flowing toward the sea begin to float. Two features of the basin, which is entirely below sea level, are particularly worrisome to scientists: First, like a cereal bowl, its edges slope down steeply. If the grounding line begins to retreat upstream, seawater will replace it and more ice will begin to float. The study’s authors predict that this positive feedback mechanism would sustain retreat of the ice sheet until eventually all of the ice filling the basin goes afloat. Second, the bed of the basin on which the ice rests is smooth. There are few big bumps, or “pinning points,” to hold back sliding ice. The newly discovered basin covers 20,000 square kilometers (7,700 square miles), nearly the size of New Jersey, and is well below sea level, nearly 2 kilometers (about 1.2 miles) deep in places.Read the full story here.