Thrawn: Miko, where are the glaciers progressing?
Apparently the ice is accumulating in Antarctica - even faster than usuall - not the floating ice that does not displace water but the icecap on the solid ground.
Which would not be much surprise. The temperatures over the South Pole are lower that usuall - which is the cause for unusually large "ozone hole" die to formation of ice clouds at unusually high altitudes.
The ice also still accumulates in Greenland. I would not be surprise if it accumulated in Canada as well. Europe's glaciers are melting
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Vaughn, D.G., Bamber, J.L., Giovinetto, M., Russell, J. and Cooper, A.P.R. 1999. Reassessment of net surface mass balance in Antarctica. Journal of Climate 12: 933-946.
The authors used more than 1800 published and unpublished in situ measurements of the surface mass balance of Antarctica to produce an updated assessment of yearly ice accumulation over the continent.
Their results indicate that the "total net surface mass balance for the conterminous grounded ice sheet is 1811 Gton yr-1 (149 kg m-2 yr-1) and for the entire ice sheet including ice shelves and embedded ice rises, 2288 Gton yr-1 (166 kg m-2 yr-1)."
The authors note that "these values are around 18% and 7% higher than the estimates widely adopted at present," which were derived about 15 years ago. Hence, they are indicative of the fact that net icefall on Antarctica may well be somewhat greater than what has been believed over the last decade and a half.
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NASA: Each year, about 8 mm of water from the entire surface of the Earth’s oceans accumulates as snow on Greenland and Antarctica. The average ice accumulation on Greenland is about 26cm/yr and Antarctica about 16cm/yr (please note accumulation is in water amounts, or about 5 times greater in snowfall).
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Mosley-Thompson, E., L.G. Thompson, J.F. Paskievitch, M. Pourchet, A.J. Gow, M.E. Davis and J. Kleinman. 1995
South Pole snow accumulation has increased in recent decades
Annals of Glaciology, 21, 182-188.
This paper summarizes the 37-year history of net accumulation measurements at the geographic South Pole obtained by numerous investigators using a variety of techniques. These data lead to the conclusion that annual net snow accumulation has increased in the vicinity of South Pole Station since 1955... The results indicatie that annual net snow accumulation has increased in the vicinity of South Pole Station (SPS) by more than 20% in the last two decades.... Further, the accumulation increase at South Pole appears consistent with increases observed at other locations on the east Antarctic Plateau, and in the Peninsula region as well. These data suggest that the recent accumulation increase at South Pole Station (SPS) may be regionally extensive over the East Antarctic Plateau.
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miko
