Ice Caps Melting: Activity #1 - Atmospheric Precipitation

Friday, March 28, 2008

Activity #1 - Atmospheric Precipitation

At the beginning of activity #1, I thought that it was pointless to do and I didn't think I was going to learn anything from it. We had to observe the heating and cooling affects of snow, water and soil at ten minute intervals. As the activity progressed, I was interested to observe how water stayed at 18 degrees Celsius during the entire heating and cooling process. Soil started at 19.6 degrees Celsius and continued to rise to 20.2 degrees Celsius by the end of the heating cycle. It shocked me when I observed it to continue to rise to 20.6 degrees Celsius by the end of the cooling cycle...I thought it would have decreased in temperature! Following suit with the soil, the snow rose from 0.2 degrees Celsius to 0.4 degrees Celsius by the end of the heating cycle and continued to rise to 0.5 degrees Celsius by the end of the cooling cycle.
Since my climate project will be on how the melting ice caps will effect the surrounding climate, I found that the heating and cooling effects of snow will greatly help me in my understanding of its properties.

1 comment:

Jennifer Grivins said...: Good reflection, nice link.; April 1, 2008 at 11:21 AM

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Ice Caps Melting

The possibility of the polar ice caps melting has been a recent concern along with the general panic over global warming. The average person thinks that the possibility of the ice caps melting is just a separate phenomenon occurring outside of global warming. But more recently scientists have said that the melting of the ice caps isn't a separate occurrence but a directly related side effect (2).
In the last 100 years, the Earth's temperature has risen half a degree Celsius (1). While this may not seem like it's that big of a deal, it has impacted the earth. Also in the last 100 years, the sea level has risen 6-8 inches (1). Coincidence? I don't think so. Rising temperatures may be to blame for the weakened ice caps with larger cracks that lead to pieces of ice (icebergs) to break off and fall into the surrounding body of water thereby raising the sea level (1).

Top Ice cap, 1979; bottom 2003

"The shrinkage corresponds to consecutive minimal records being set throughout the 1990s, with the year 1991 being the only exception to the pattern (when Mount Pinatubo erupted in the Philippines, spewing ash into the atmosphere, which temporarily cooled the arctic - this event also illustrates just how sensitive the global climate is to emissions in the atmosphere).

In the last two decades, temperatures have been rising in the arctic at a rate 20 times faster than the warming that occurred over the previous century, and the thickness of the ice sheet has decreased by about half (down from 15 feet in the 1980s to 8 feet in 2003). Springs are coming earlier, and fall is arriving later, which combined with higher summer temperatures year after year contributes to the gradual shrinking of the permanent ice sheet. Surface temperatures are increasing at a rate of 2 degrees per decade over the region, and the result is pooling of liquid water on the surface of the ice sheets."(4)
Antarctica possesses 90% of the worlds ice so if it were to melt, the sea level would rise over 200 feet (1). This would put all coastal cities around the world under water. Think of Manhattan Island under water!

(5) (This photo illustration, created by John Blackford and Cameron Davidson for Vanity Fair, shows what Manhattan might look like if global warming continued until polar ice caps melted.)

Even though most of Antarctica never gets above freezing (1) the parts that are melting and/or breaking off and thereby raising the sea level are cause for concern.
Still there are some that speculate that a recent focus on the melting of the ice caps (Al Gore's Inconvenient Truths) is simply inaccurate. Such as Jerome J. Schmitt who states,

"Al Gore's claim that ocean levels will rise 20 feet thanks to global warming seems to ignore the laws of thermodynamics. I am no climatologist, but I do know about physics.

Anyone who has ever spent time in a temperate climate following a snowy winter realizes that when the air temperature rises above 32°F the snow and ice do not melt immediately. We may experience many balmy early spring days with temperatures well above freezing while snow drifts slowly melt over days or weeks. Similarly, lakes and ponds take some time to freeze even days or weeks after the air temperature has plunged below zero. This is due to the latent heat of freezing/melting of water, a physical concept long quantified in thermodynamics.

That aspect of basic physics seems to have been overlooked by climatologists in their alarming claims of dramatic and rapid sea-level rise due to melting of the Antarctic ice caps and Greenland glaciers. But of course, we have learned that models predicting global warming also failed to take account of precipitation, so overlooking important factors ("inconvenient truths") should not cause much surprise anymore."(3) Whether it's the scientists who are right, the skeptics that are right, or Mother Nature running her course; I think it's really important to take care of the Earth because we only have one and it shouldn't be left for future generations to take care of it's problems. By then, it could be too late to do anything.

Bibliography:

1.) http://science.howstuffworks.com/question473.htm
By: Marshall Brain

2.)http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/02/010222075413.htm
By: Science Daily

3.)http://www.americanthinker.com/jerome_j_schmitt/
By: Jerome J. Schmitt

4.)http://www.awitness.org/journal/melt_ice_cap_glacier.html
By: NASA

5.) Picture from: http://neatorama.cachefly.net/images/uploads/2007/01/manhattan_global_warmingjpg.jpg&imgrefurl
By: John Blackford and Cameron Davidson for Vanity Fair

Friday, March 28, 2008

Activity #1 - Atmospheric Precipitation

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Ice Caps Melting

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