Saturday, April 9, 2016

Weekend Rebel Science Excursion - 56

Fig. 1 (not to scale) click to enlarge
It has been a while since I have had to rebel against official intransigence.

This post is formulated as a "lead and polynya" hypothesis against the intractable government officials whom Dr. Mitrovica went to see in Scandinavia.

I specifically mean those officials who did not believe the discussion he conducted with them about the ice sheet gravity of Antarctica, or that Antarctic ice sheet melt would impact sea level at their shores far away from Antarctica (see yesterday's video).

Yesterday's post also mentioned polynyas on Antarctic ice shelves (see this for a description and discussion of "polynyas" and "leads").

Fig. 2 (not to scale) click to enlarge
The graphic at Fig. 1 depicts an ice shelf before cracks appear in it (cracks due to reasons explained in yesterday's post).

Moving along, Fig. 2 shows the same situation after cracks form in the ice shelf which then develop leads (linear cracks) and/or polynyas (roundish holes).

What is specifically depicted and inferred in the two graphic portrays is a situation where there should be no water on top of the ice sheet because the ice shelf surface is above sea level.

Since water does not naturally flow upward above sea level, my hypothesis is that polynyas and/or leads form in some cases because the ice sheet gravity pulls the water into its sphere of influence.

Fig. 3
By "its sphere of influence", I mean the triangle formed by the gravity line, the surface of the ice shelf, and the edge of the land mass the ice sheet rests upon (the upper left triangular shaped section of the drawings in Fig. 1 and Fig. 2).

As pointed out yesterday, some of these polynyas stick around for years, so, in cases where there is no apparent reason for them to reach that high above sea level, it can be considered yet another proof of concept as to the reality of ice sheet gravitational influence.
Fig. 4

On another front, I am progressing along with the module that calculates sea level change fingerprints.

Today I will show some graphs made with "csv files" generated by the module.

What remains to be coded, because the quantities of contribution will change, is the portrayal of that dynamic change in the amount of future contribution by Antarctica.

Fig. 5
Currently, Greenland contributes more, in terms of displacement and ghost-water, but that will change in time because Antarctica will become the greater contributor to sea level change sometime in the not-so-distant future.

Anyway, today's graphs are composed from the data of a list of PSMSL tide gauge stations.

Zone AH.SE.NE contains the following PSMSL tide gauge stations: 
#1230 DIGBY, #1158 YARMOUTH, #1259 BOUTILIER POINT, #96 HALIFAX, #1654 TRENTON, #1153 CAPE MAY, #180 ATLANTIC CITY,
Fig. 6 high SLR projection
#366 SANDY HOOK, #12 NEW YORK THE BATTERY, #1637 BERGEN POINT STATEN IS, #519 MONTAUK, #875 PLUM ISLAND, #848 PORT JEFFERSON, #362 WILLETS POINT, #856 NEW ROCHELLE, #1068 BRIDGEPORT, #429 NEW LONDON, #430 PROVIDENCE STATE PIER, #351 NEWPORT, #776 BUZZARDS BAY, #367 WOODS HOLE OCEAN INST, #1111 NANTUCKET ISLAND, #775 SANDWICH MARINA CAPE COD CANAL ENTRANCE, #235 BOSTON, #288 SEAVEY ISLAND, #183 PORTLAND MAINE, #1279 ROCKLAND, #525 BAR HARBOR FRENCHMAN BAY ME, #1524 CUTLER II, #1081 CUTLER, #332 EASTPORT.
(East Coast, US and CA). The station number (#nnn) precedes the station name (in caps).

The graphs at Fig. 3 (line format) and Fig. 4 (panel format) show that Zone's geophysical components of sea level rise in two format types.

Note that the degree of sea level change depicted is based on the projected IPCC global mean average high and low for that area as shown in Fig. 5 (the history | future divide is the year 2015) as marked in the Hansen et al. projection Fig. 6 (A Paper From Hansen et al. Is Now Open For Discussion, 2, 3).

Have a nice weekend.

LOUDER THAN WORDS
(by Todd Henry)

"When people don’t express themselves, they die one piece at a time.—​­Laurie Halse Anderson, Speak

Your work tells tales. It speaks about you, your values, your hopes, your ambitions, and ultimately what you deem worthy of your energy and attention. It reveals, intentionally or not, what you really think about the world around you. Ultimately, your body of work—​­which is any place you create value, whether through your job, your relationships, or any other way you spend your time and energy—is​­ a standing testament to your existence on this speck of rock orbiting the sun.

Here’s a question worth pondering: While your work speaks about you, does it really speak for you? Does it represent you well? Does it reflect the authentic you? (Or, in your busyness, have you even recently considered who the authentic you might be?) The key to making your work resonate is to uncover, develop, and then bravely use your authentic voice.

What does this mean? When you are pouring yourself into your work and bringing your unique perspective and skills to the table, then you are adding value that only you are capable of contributing. However, many people operate in “default mode,” and they ignore their hunches, their deeper intuition, and their unique vision, and instead settle into the fold. Over time, they become more of a reflection of everyone around them—​­or a faded photocopy of a photocopy—​­than an original source of ideas, energy, and life. Instead of doing the difficult work necessary to weave their influences together into something fresh and original, they settle for recycling the scraps in exchange for a quick return on their effort. In the end, they fall short of making a unique contribution that’s reflective of what they truly care about, and because of a lack of individuality and passion, their work is less likely to resonate with their audience.

However, brilliant contributors commit to the process of developing an authentic voice through trial and error, by paying attention to how they respond to the work of peers, heroes, and even their antagonists, by playing with ideas, by cultivating a sharp vision for their work, and ultimately by honing their skills so that they have the ability to bring that vision to the world. If you examine the most contributive, impactful, and ultimately influential people throughout history, the one thing that clearly sets them apart is their unique voice. They had developed a personal expression that distanced them from their peers and put them in a field of their own. Their body of work speaks loudly about who they are and what they value. Louder, even, than their words." (First Two Chapters)


Thursday, April 7, 2016

Questionable Scientific Papers - 8

Fig. 1 "Iceland" named before Greenland?
Today, I criticize a paper by fossil fuel industry minions (Helmholtz).

Iceland is "smack dab in the middle" of a large sea level fall (SLF) area caused by the ice sheet of Greenland.

That Greenland ice sheet has ice mass created gravity which impacts the ocean level around it.

This has been shown in various Dredd Blog posts (e.g. Proof of Concept - 5), because these oceanographic oddities are attached to serious events which impact all of our lives in some way (You Are Here - 5).

The graphic at Fig. 1 shows the location (red squares) of two PSMSL tide gauge stations (#638 Reykjavik, #877 Grindavik), as well as the location of Icelandic glaciers.

The graph at Fig. 2 shows the PSMSL record of those two tide gauge stations blended into zone AC.SE.SW with a result of a 165 mm SLR over the period of 1957-2014, for a mean average of ~2.9 mm yr.
Fig. 2 Iceland 's sea level record

The nature of the historical record shown in that graph is unmistakably sea level rise (SLR) even though it is within an area of SLF.

The typical ways of explaining this are to be found in the warming scientific commentariat (The Warming Science Commentariat, 2).

Fig. 3 Iceland is in a sea level fall area
For example, one of them has it that land uplift is taking place there but "whether the current rebound is due to past or modern ice loss is an open question" and "Although most large ice caps in Iceland lie over volcanic centers, heat linked with these volcanoes accounts for less than 5 percent of the total observed melting of these ice caps. This means that about 95 percent of the total ice melt in Iceland is likely due to changes in climate." (Live Science, emphasis added).The same goes for Greenland

So, why pray tell would a Helmholtz scientific team use that as an example of geophysical forces melting the Greenland Ice Sheet from below rather than anthropogenic global warming?

Because they are part of the Oil-Qaeda deceit team:
"... an area of abnormally hot mantle material that still today is responsible for the volcanic activity of Iceland. The mantle material heated and thinned Greenland at depth producing a strong geothermal anomaly that spans a quarter of the land area of Greenland. That distant history of the North Atlantic region contributes to the present-day ice loss"
(Doubt AGW Inc., emphasis added). Wrong, the recent volcanic activity in Iceland was caused by global warming induced melting on an Iceland glacier.

The loss of pressure on the volcano as the ice thinned allowed the cork to blow at the Eyjafjallajökull volcano (Global Warming & Volcanic Eruptions).

The ones who prepared the paper being criticized today are Oil-Qaeda minions within the realm of the merchants of doubt (Dredd Comment on that paper).

Their decades-long mission to cover up the devastation and death of the creatures of planet Earth are quite clear (The Authoritarianism of Climate Change).

Fig. 4 Antarctic Melt raising sea level @ Iceland?
Let's review the offers of proof advanced so far to explain the SLR at Iceland tide gauge stations.

Would land uplift, as set forth in the Live Science article, make tide gauges record sea level rise?

No, it would be the opposite.

If land mass movement is to be considered as the cause in an SLR scenario, the land mass must be dropping, not rising.

Land subsidence causes tide gauge stations to record instances of apparent SLR, while land uplift causes tide gauge stations to record apparent SLF.

Ok then, would thermal effects of sub-glacial volcanoes there in Iceland be an answer?

No, scientists I quoted pointed out that in the case of Iceland global warming melted the glaciers (same in Greenland BTW), and that let the lava flow out of the volcano in Iceland.

So, I offer the solution shown in Fig. 4 where Antarctica is shown to also be melting and contributing to sea level rise in the area of Iceland and elsewhere.

That displacement induced sea level rise also contributes to some increase of water near Iceland.

Iceland's glacial mass produced gravity can then more easily pull water near it and thereby have an impact upon the records of the two tide gauge stations at its southern end (Reykjavik and Grindavik).

The tug and the back and forth among Greenland, Antarctica, and glacial area contributions to sea level is not just an up or a down movement.

No, it is both up and down as tide gauges have shown for a century or so.

The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.

video @26:20 when I talked to government people in the Netherlands two weeks ago, to explain that they would be inordinately impacted if Antarctica melts, they did not believe me ...

The gravity of sea level change, Dr. Mitrovica of Harvard University:



Monday, April 4, 2016

The Ghost-Water Constant - 6

Fig. 1
I. Introduction

Yet another new paper reveals that the ice shelves of Antarctica are degenerating from below.
Fig. 2

Fig. 3
What is new about this paper is that the warmer water below the shelves is "bubbling" up through weaknesses in the ice shelves.
Fig. 4

The paper surprisingly points out that some of that upwelling water sometimes even reaches the surface of the ice shelves.

Fig. 5
In today's post I will argue that the gravity of the ice sheet has a pull on that ghost-water which gives it the upward bias.
Fig. 6

Fig. 7
You might want to read or review the hypothesis of ice sheet gravity and its impact on sea level (The Gravity of Sea Level Change, 2, 3, 4).

II. Ice Shelf Stressors

The ocean tides bend and stress ice shelves each and every day (NASA Tracking the Influence of Tides on Ice Shelves In Antarctica).

Fig. 8
Warm water flowing under the ice shelves, pulled towards the ice sheet and coast by ice sheet gravity, finds weak spots.

Weak spots caused by cracking and other imperfections (dirt etc.) in the ice shelf: "Our observations show that basal channels are associated with the development of new zones of crevassing, suggesting that these channels may cause ice fracture." (Impacts of warm water on Antarctic ice shelf). [or be made by fractures]

The creation of sub-ice-shelf water channels is also caused or enhanced by ice sheet gravity:
"The mapping shows that basal channels have a tendency to form along the edges of islands and peninsulas, which are already weak areas on ice shelves. The team observed two locations where ice shelves are fracturing along basal channels, clear evidence that basal channel presence can weaken ice shelves to the point of breaking in vulnerable areas."
(Warming ocean water undercuts Antarctic ice shelves, emphasis added).

Then the incessant pull of ice sheet gravity (like a continual high tide) on the ocean water under the ice sheets pulls it upward and presses it against then into cracks and other weak places (Polynyas).

Some polynyas form without channels and persist for years: see "Years observed", "Channel type ... None" (Supplementary Info, Appendix B, p. 22, PDF).

The result of this in the commentariat world is "worse than previously thought" (Rising Seas Could Threaten the World's Coastal Cities Much Sooner than Scientists Thought, Study Confirms; World’s Coastal Cities Unsavable; If We Don’t Slash Carbon Pollution, Ice melt could make seas rise 6 feet by 2100, study says).

III. Deeper Ghost Water Discovery

The ghost-water science is moving along on another front too:
"So Rignot and an international team of researchers took it upon themselves to map out 14 glacial fjords in West Greenland, north of the famous Ilulissat Glacier. At various points between 2007 and 2014, they measured temperature and depth in these fjords and used sonar to map out underwater topographic features. They found that the actual seafloor depths were anywhere from 100 to 1,000 meters deeper than what was previously suggested by the charts.
...
The Oceans Melting Greenland, or OMG, mission kicked off last April with the goal of measuring ocean temperatures and modeling the shape and depth of the seafloor in Greenland to help scientists better understand the role the ocean plays in the melting of the ice sheet."
(Greenland’s melting, OMG). Regular readers will remember that uncertainty in this area had caused me to be very conservative in calculations concerning how much ghost-water was located along the shores of ice sheet supporting land masses (The Ghost-Water Constant - 4).

I may have to increase the percentage that I now use, once these studies become more robust by way of further discoveries.

IV. Warm Air Also Accelerates The Process

The ghost-water science is moving along ... faster ... in another area too:
Polar temperatures over the last several million years have, at times, been slightly warmer than today, yet global mean sea level has been 6–9 metres higher as recently as the Last Interglacial (130,000 to 115,000 years ago) and possibly higher during the Pliocene epoch (about three million years ago). In both cases the Antarctic ice sheet has been implicated as the primary contributor, hinting at its future vulnerability. Here we use a model coupling ice sheet and climate dynamics—including previously underappreciated processes linking atmospheric warming with hydrofracturing of buttressing ice shelves and structural collapse of marine-terminating ice cliffs—that is calibrated against Pliocene and Last Interglacial sea-level estimates and applied to future greenhouse gas emission scenarios. Antarctica has the potential to contribute more than a metre of sea-level rise by 2100 and more than 15 metres by 2500, if emissions continue unabated. In this case atmospheric warming will soon become the dominant driver of ice loss, but prolonged ocean warming will delay its recovery for thousands of years.
(Antarctica Melting). Over, around, under, and through is the way ghost-water is working to accelerate sea level change (by accelerating ice shelf disintegration which accelerates ice sheet flow into the ocean).

V. The Graphs of Wrath

That brings up the graphs in today's post, so let me describe them as pieces of portions of the evolving model.

I have not completely finished the fingerprint modules that project into the future, although some of the work is producing graphing data now.

The part that is unfinished has to do with the high-end estimates of future sea level change, and the expected finger prints in the future.

Anyway, the historical data is the basis of all of them.

Even he future projecting algorithms are all based on and spring from the official PSMSL official historical records.

Today's area involved in the graphs is AM.NW.SE (Hawaiian Islands).

This zone involves stations 2129 PORT ALLEN (HANAPEPE BAY, KAUAI ISLAND), 756 NAWILIWILI BAY (KAUAI ISLAND), 155 HONOLULU, 823 MOKUOLOE ISLAND, 2273 LANAI ISLAND KAUMALAPAU, 521 KAHULUI HARBOR (MAUI ISLAND), 2128 KAWAIHAE (HAWAII ISLAND), 300 HILO (HAWAII ISLAND).

The area's PSMSL mean historical sea level is shown in Fig. 1, the geographical fingerprint in Fig. 6, and the geophysical fingerprint is shown in Fig. 7 .

The graph at Fig. 8 shows how some ghost-water flows from the sea level fall areas in northern latitudes down to the AM.NW.SE sea level rise area of Hawaii, as rotational pull relocates it nearer to the equator.

The graphs at Fig. 2 and Fig. 5 show (in two graph styles) the historical, then future low-end IPCC / Hansen et. al. projections for the area.

The graphs at Fig. 3 and Fig. 4 show the geographical and geophysical effects on sea level change at the IPCC low end projections out beyond historical levels to the year 2100.

When I finish the high-end projections I will publish more graphs.

VI. Conclusion

The bottom line for today's post is that ghost-water is a larger player in accurate projections than thermal expansion is, and that displacement (see Fig. 7) caused by calving and ice sheet melt is the big dog in sea level change.

The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.