Doctor Jolly wrote on Jan 3
rd, 2014 at 2:22pm:
Soren wrote on Jan 3
rd, 2014 at 1:04pm:
Antarctic ice has rarely been more extensive - is that weather? But when arctic ice shrinks - that's climate.
Is that how it works? Scary bad news - climate. Good news/no news - weather.
Has antartica had its coldest year on record, like Australia (a similar sized continent) has had it hotest ?
Quote:Anyway, the explanation for the ice-trapped ship was that AGW made sea water less salty (melting icebergs - thus making it 'more vulnerable to freezing'.
So the explanation for the ice trap was not weather but AGW - ie climate.
Who made the claim about less salty water ?
Er... Prof Chris Turney.
Q: Dr Adam Rutherford: The fact that it’s expanding, that - that sounds counter-intuitive, when we talk about the polar ice caps melting, as a result of global warming.
A: Prof Chris Turney: Yeah, well, it’s a fascinating thing, isn’t it, really. Ultimately, global warming covers a vast array of different responses by our planet. And one of the fascinating things that we’re seeing is suggestions that large parts of the oceans off East Antarctica are actually getting fresher. And yet you’ve got this expanding sea ice, and one of the ideas we’re testing out here is this idea that when you’re melting the sea ice around the East Antarctic coastal fringes, at depth - not from air temperature but from warmer oceans -
what you’re doing is you’re putting that fresh water from the Antarctic ice sheets into the oceans. It’s lighter, it’s less dense than salt water, so it floats to the surface relatively, and then it’s more vulnerable to freezing. And hence you get an expansion of sea ice cover. So that’s one idea that we’re testing at the moment.