date: Wed, 16 May 2007 12:05:28 +0100 from: "Mike Hulme" subject: RE: FYI: Analysis Finds Large Antarctic Area Has Melted to: "'Phil Jones'" Phil, Nothing scary about this. Quite interesting really. I have never claimed anyone at UEA has "mis-reported" - even if I thought they had. Research paper is at : [1]www.tyndall.ac.uk/publications/working_papers/twp98_summary.shtml Submitted for publication. Mike -----Original Message----- From: Phil Jones [mailto:p.jones@uea.ac.uk] Sent: 16 May 2007 10:51 To: m.hulme@uea.ac.uk Subject: Fwd: FYI: Analysis Finds Large Antarctic Area Has Melted Mike, Not sure if this is the sort of scaremongering reporting you are referring to! Also not sure who you are referring to as misreporting here at UEA. Maybe Dave, but he's not here now! Cheers Phil Date: Wed, 16 May 2007 04:36:14 -0500 To: schlesin@atmos.uiuc.edu From: Michael Schlesinger Subject: FYI: Analysis Finds Large Antarctic Area Has Melted X-UEA-Spam-Score: 1.7 X-UEA-Spam-Level: + X-UEA-Spam-Flag: NO [2]http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/16/science/earth/16melt.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&ref=science &pagewanted=print May 16, 2007 Analysis Finds Large Antarctic Area Has Melted By ANDREW C. REVKIN While much of the world has warmed in a pattern that scientists have linked with near certainty to human activities, the frigid interior of Antarctica has resisted the trend. Now, a new satellite analysis shows that at least once in the last several years, masses of unusually warm air pushed to within 310 miles of the South Pole and remained long enough to melt surface snow across a California-size expanse. The warm spell, which occurred over one week in 2005, was detected by scientists from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory of NASA and the University of Colorado, Boulder. Balmy air, with a temperature of up to 41 degrees in some places, persisted across three broad swathes of West Antarctica long enough to leave a distinctive signature of melting, a layer of ice in the snow that cloaks the vast ice sheets of the frozen continent. The layer formed the same way a crust of ice can form in a yard in winter when a warm day and then a freezing night follow a snowfall, the scientists said. The evidence of melting was detected by a National Aeronautics and Space Administration satellite, the QuickScat, that uses radar to distinguish between snow and ice as it scans the surfaces of Greenland and Antarctica. There have been other areas in Antarctica where such melt zones have been seen, but they are not common so far inland, said Son Nghiem, a scientist at the NASA laboratory who directed the analysis with Konrad Steffen, a glaciologist at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Some melting also occurred at an elevation of more than 6,000 feet, in regions where temperatures usually remain far below freezing year-round. It is too soon to know whether the warm spell was a fluke or a portent, Dr. Nghiem said. "It is vital we continue monitoring this region to determine if a long-term trend may be developing," he said. Dr. Steffen said if such conditions intensified or persisted for a long time, the melting could conceivably produce streams of water that could, as has been measured in Greenland, percolate down to bedrock and allow the thick ice sheets coating the continent to slide a bit faster toward the sea. Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company * Privacy Policy Search Corrections RSS First Look Help Contact Us Work for Us Site Map Figure. NASA's QuikScat satellite detected extensive areas of snowmelt, shown in yellow and red, in west Antarctica in January 2005. Prof. Phil Jones Climatic Research Unit Telephone +44 (0) 1603 592090 School of Environmental Sciences Fax +44 (0) 1603 507784 University of East Anglia Norwich Email p.jones@uea.ac.uk NR4 7TJ UK ----------------------------------------------------------------------------