Melting Threat From West Antarctic Ice Sheet May Be Less Than
Expected; U.S. Coastal Cities Not At Risk
ScienceDaily (May 15, 2009) — While a total or partial collapse of the
West Antarctic Ice Sheet as a result of last summer's warming would
not raise global sea levels at all.

Long thought of as the sleeping giant with respect to sea level rise,
Antarctica holds about nine times the volume of ice of Greenland. Its
western ice sheet, known as WAIS, is of particular interest to
scientists due to its inherent instability, a result of large areas of
the continent's bedrock lying below sea level. But the ice sheet's
potential contribution to sea level rise has been greatly
overestimated, according to new calculations.

•• Since the ice sheets are floating they can not
raise sea levels as much as one hair.

"There's a vast body of research that's looked at the likelihood of a
WAIS collapse and what implications such a catastrophic event would
have for the globe," said Jonathan Bamber, lead author of the study
published in Science May 15. "But all of these studies have assumed a
5-meter to 6-meter contribution to sea level rise. Our calculations
show those estimates are much too large, even on a thousand-year
timescale."

•• They certainly are too large on any scale.

Bamber and his colleagues found a WAIS collapse would only raise sea
levels by 3.3 meters, or about 11 feet. Bamber, a professor at the
University of Bristol in England, currently is a visiting fellow at
the University of Colorado at Boulder's Cooperative Institute for
Research in Environmental Sciences, or CIRES.

The study authors used models based on glaciological theory to
simulate how the massive ice sheet likely would respond if the
floating ice shelves fringing the continent broke free. Vast ice
shelves currently block WAIS from spilling into the Weddell and Ross
seas, limiting total ice loss to the ocean.
According to theory, if these floating ice shelves were removed,
sizeable areas of WAIS would essentially become undammed, triggering
an acceleration of the ice sheet toward the ocean and a rapid inland
migration of the grounding line. The grounding line is the point where
the ice sheet's margins meet the ocean and begin to float.

•• Once again armchair "scientists" playing with their
computers produce BSI = BSO

- -
The evidence from Mars destroys the notion that
humans are responsible for warming Earth. Mars
has global warming, but without a greenhouse
and without the participation of Martians.

Dr Habibullo Abdussamatov

marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov/odyssey/newsroom/pressreleases/20031208a.html