NASA Has More Evidence Volcanic Activity Is Heating Up Antarctica’s Ice Sheet


 


MICHAEL BASTASCH


 


Ancient underground streams of heated rock, called a mantle plume, might be an explanation for the instability of Antarctica’s western ice sheet, according to a new NASA study.


Scientists have been debating whether or not mantle plume heat contributes to western Antarctica’s instability. Some recent studies provided evidence this might be the case, but even this study’s authors were skeptical.


“I thought it was crazy,” Hélène Seroussi, the study’s co-author and scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said in a release.


“I didn’t see how we could have that amount of heat and still have ice on top of it,” Seroussi said in a statement.


NASA says Seroussi’s study provides more evidence of geothermal activity underneath a portion of the world’s largest ice sheet.


Scientists tend to worry more about future global warming’s effect on Antarctic ice sheet. NASA glaciologist Eric Rignot said western ice sheet collapse is “unstoppable” and could dramatically raise sea levels.


However, Antarctica has gone through periods of instability in the past. Seroussi’s study provides important context for the western ice sheet’s instability, and how mantle plumes may play a role.


Seroussi and co-author Erik Ivins used enhanced numerical modeling to see if a mantle plume could really be creating rivers of melted water under Marie Byrd Land in western Antarctica. They compared their model to real-world observations of changes in the ice sheet.


Scientists think mantle plumes are thin streams of heated rock that makes its way upward, melting ice and creating rivers and lakes of meltwater under Antarctica’s western ice sheet. Mantle plumes could have contributed to ice sheet instability about 11,000 years ago.


Seroussi’s study showed a mantle plume pushes 150 milliwatts per square meter of heat up towards the ice sheet. That’s about two to three times the heat flux of regions of the world without volcanic activity.


A 2014 University of Texas study found western Antarctica was a literal hotbed for geothermal heat. Researchers concluded that “large areas at the base of Thwaites Glacier are actively melting in response to geothermal flux consistent with rift-associated magma migration and volcanism.”


The following year, another team of U.S. scientists found there’s a huge amount of geothermal heat under western Antarctica. “The high geothermal heat flux may help to explain why ice streams and subglacial lakes are so abundant and dynamic in this region,” the study found.


Earlier this year, Scottish researchers found 91 previously unidentified volcanoes under the Antarctic ice sheet, including one that’s some 13,000 feet tall.


If one of these volcanoes were to erupt it could further destabilize west Antarctica’s ice sheets,” Robert Bingham, a study co-author, told The Guardian. “Anything that causes the melting of ice – which an eruption certainly would – is likely to speed up the flow of ice into the sea.


“The big question is: how active are these volcanoes? That is something we need to determine as quickly as possible,” Bingham said.


 


MY TAKE:  OMG!  Whatever will we do about THIS??  This quite literally sets the Gore-bull Warming Hoax upside down!  Imagine!  The warming in Antarctica is coming from the INTERIOR of the planet, NOT from me driving my SUV on the beach and smoking El Presidente cigars!!!  So, I think I’ll go for a ride on the beach this evening, smoke an El Presidente, and come home to my lovely Alice Annette for a double Margarita! 


Oh, by the way, are the space cadets still watching for that stray asteroid the size of Kansas that’s gonna splock into Earth whenever?  Will they warn us in time to do whatever the hell the morons think we can do about the inevitable?  Will we have sufficient warning to buy a Prius?


 


 


See article at:http://dailycaller.com/20...


 


 


 

Wanda Hope Carter
I first started watching stories about this a few tears back.  It is indisputable.  But what worries me recently is that Trump's EPA made an announcement  that global warming is real and a good deal of it is man made. My circumstances leave me  unable to research that. Is there a bigger story lame s...
  • November 8, 2017
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Wanda Hope Carter
Lol I accidentally said a few tears back, meant years, but yeah, that too.
  • November 8, 2017
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BlueMax372
Freudian? LOL!
  • November 8, 2017
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Wanda Hope Carter
OLol probably
  • November 8, 2017
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BlueMax372
I would have missed this if not for Drudge. Obviously, it's something the Make-Believe Media doesn't want to get out. As for the EPA, it's still 0v0mit's with all the progturd moles he planted there during his 8-year nightmarish reign.
  • November 8, 2017
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