[✔️] Jan 27, 2024 Global Warming News | Courage beats hope, Antarctica changing, 1995 early perceptions

[R.Pauli]

/*January*//*27, 2024*/**

/[ search for a motto ]/*/
/**"Everything makes a difference" * and *"Courage is preferable to hope"*
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_ju_lDz82w
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_BoZDS1gjU



/[ notice the changes  ]*
*/*Unravelling Antarctica’s Sea Ice Puzzle*
Sea ice around the Antarctic has shrunk and is responding to the 
atmosphere differently. The challenge is to work out why
byBenoit Legresy, CSIRO,Ariaan Purich, Monash Universityand1 others 
January 25, 2024

Throughout 2023, the area of ocean around Antarctica covered by sea ice 
was so far below the norm that scientists have struggled to communicate 
their shock.

This month, as the sea ice shrinks to its smallest point of the year, it 
is once again tracking well below its previous levels.

Research released in September 2023 shows that ocean warming was a key 
contributor to the dramatic change in sea ice.

The question is where the heat comes from.

A new satellite launched recently may provide the key to understanding 
how the ocean transports heat to Antarctica’s margins where it has a 
devastating impact on sea ice and ice shelves.

Sea ice insulates the ocean, reflects heat, drives currents, supports 
ecosystems and protects ice shelves.

Every year, its annual cycle of freezing and melting around Antarctica 
has been extremely reliable. Until recently.

Now we have a preliminary indication that since 2016 Antarctic sea ice 
coverage has shrunk. Changes in the relationship between the ocean and 
sea ice suggest that the current low sea-ice state may represent a new 
“regime” for Antarctic sea ice.
After years of relative stability, Antarctica’s sea ice appears to have 
shrunk since 2016.

Sea ice forms a thin layer between the ocean and the atmosphere and is 
affected by both.

Lately, sea ice seems to be responding to atmospheric drivers 
differently than it did in the past, suggesting a stronger influence 
from the slowly varying ocean.

Parts of the ocean 100–200m below the surface began to warm in 2015, and 
those same regions lost substantial sea ice in 2016. Since then, the 
warm subsurface ocean seems to have maintained the low sea-ice coverage.

The record-breaking low sea ice of 2023 may be the new abnormal, the 
beginning of the inevitable decline in Antarctic sea ice, long projected 
by climate models.

For millions of years, the icy continent has been ring-fenced by the 
Antarctic Circumpolar Current, separating the warm northern waters from 
the cold polar ocean.

Flowing clockwise around Antarctica and driven by westerly winds, the 
current is the world’s strongest, with a flow 100 times stronger than 
all rivers combined.
The Antarctic Circumpolar Current flows around Antarctica, keeping warm 
water out — but eddies can let heat through.

The current ‘feels’ the seafloor and the mountains in its path. Where it 
encounters barriers like ridges or seamounts, ‘wiggles’ are created in 
the water flow that form eddies.

Ocean eddies are the weather systems of the seas, and they play a key 
role in transporting heat through the circumpolar current to the ocean 
around Antarctica. But they’re small and hard for satellites to see.

Broad-scale ocean mapping identifies at least five major ‘heat flux 
gates’ or eddy hotspots in the circumpolar current.

One is south of Australia, about halfway between Tasmania and Antarctica.

Related Articles: Arctic Summer Sea Ice Could Disappear As Soon As 2035 
| With Antarctica Ice Shelf Melting Sea Levels To Rise By Several Feet | 
5 Visible Signs of Climate Change in Antarctica
To understand the ocean dynamics happening now and how these may change 
in the future, we need much higher-resolution data to see smaller-scale 
features like the eddy hotspots.

Enter the Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellite. Jointly 
developed by NASA and French space agency Centre National d’Études 
Spatiales (CNES), the SWOT satellite measures differences in the height 
of the ocean within a few centimetres from an orbit of more than 890km 
above the surface.

The advanced radar altimeters on the two-tonne satellite detect surface 
water features with 10 times better resolution than previous technologies.

Oceanographers say it’s like a short-sighted person looking at a tree in 
the distance, and then putting on glasses to reveal all the leaves.

As SWOT passes over the Southern Ocean, the high-resolution topography 
it records of the shape of the ocean surface shows the fine streams of 
current to capture the eddy hotspots spinning off the Antarctic 
Circumpolar Current.

This means scientists can monitor these smaller-scale circulation 
features thought to be responsible for transporting most of the heat and 
carbon from the upper ocean to deeper layers – a critical buffer against 
global warming.

For the first time we can see them on the surface in detail – but we 
still need to work out what’s happening beneath the waves.

In November 2023, scientists were able to validate the SWOT satellite 
data from an eddy hotspot in the Southern Ocean in an ambitious voyage 
on CSIRO research vessel (RV) Investigator.

The five-week FOCUS voyage travelled 850 nautical miles south of Hobart 
to the Macquarie meander, one of the five eddy hotspots.

A meander may sound gentle and slow, but in fact it’s where the world’s 
strongest current races through a series of hairpin bends, steered by 
mountains on the seafloor.

As the satellite passed overhead, the team led by CSIRO and the 
Australian Antarctic Program Partnership deployed a variety of high-tech 
observational equipment.

Researchers and crew anchored a tall mooring 3.6km high at the centre of 
the survey area, carrying over 54 instruments on a cable stretching from 
the seafloor to near the surface.

They also released free-floating autonomous instruments like floats, 
drifters and gliders into the eddies, while more than a hundred CTDs – 
conductivity, temperature, and depth sensors – plumbed the depths and a 
Triaxus was towed behind the ship through the satellite’s path.
Researchers use a variety of instruments to understand the ocean. Some 
float along the surface, some dive deep in the water, and some follow 
directed paths using motors.

The wealth of information gathered by all these instruments 
‘ground-truths’ and validates the satellite data from the surface.

The Antarctic is rapidly changing, and with further disruptions to the 
sea-ice cycle on the cards, there’s a race to understand why.

Strong winds over the Southern Ocean have been increasing for decades 
and are likely to continue. It’s expected this will send more heat 
southward through leaky meanders, accelerating ice shelf melting in 
Antarctica and sea level rise.

Ultimately, this research aims to turn daily maps of ocean sea surface 
height from satellites into daily maps of the movement of heat in the 
Southern Ocean toward Antarctica.

This is vital information in a climate crisis. It will help governments 
plan how to respond to ocean warming and rising sea levels and how 
quickly action is needed.

At the same time, as the transition to a net-zero world gathers momentum 
and carbon levels in the atmosphere start to level out, we need to be 
able to track the response of the Southern Ocean and the global climate 
system.

** **

This article was originally published by 360info™.
https://impakter.com/unravelling-antarcticas-sea-ice-puzzle/
- -
[more info ]
https://360info.org/how-sea-ice-blew-the-socks-off-scientists/



/[The news archive from 1995  ]/
/*January 27, 1995 */
January 27, 1995: The New York Times reports:

    "Whatever happened to global warming? The question was on many lips
    a year ago, when the northeastern United States suffered through its
    bitterest winter in years. Now an exceptionally warm winter has
    whipsawed perceptions about the world's climate once again.

    "An answer has become apparent in annual climatic statistics in the
    last few days: global warming, interrupted as a result of the
    mid-1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines, has resumed
    -- just as many experts had predicted.

    "After a two-year cooling period, the average temperature of the
    earth's surface rebounded in 1994 to the high levels of the 1980's,
    the warmest decade ever recorded, according to three sets of data in
    the United States and Britain.

    "The earth's average surface temperature last year closely
    approached the record high of almost 60 degrees measured in 1990.
    That was the last full year before the Pinatubo eruption, which
    cooled the earth by injecting into the atmosphere a haze of
    sulfurous droplets that reflected some of the sun's heat."

http://www.nytimes.com/1995/01/27/us/a-global-warming-resumed-in-1994-climate-data-show.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm



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