Sentences with phrase «high surface of the ice sheet»

The research team found the evidence confirming the stability of the East Antarctic ice sheet at an altitude of 6,200 feet, about 400 miles from the South Pole at the edge of what's called the polar plateau, a flat, high surface of the ice sheet covering much of East Antarctica.

Not exact matches

Co-author Professor Jonathan Bamber, based at the University of Bristol, and President of the European Geoscience Union (EGU), added: «We are seeing changes in the large - scale circulation patterns, which leads to more frequent sunshine and higher amounts of solar energy reaching the surface of the ice sheet.

In January 2005, for example, Ohio State University geophysicist Ralph von Frese and his colleagues noticed a concentration of higher - than - average - density material in the rock about a mile under the surface of the East Antarctic ice sheet.

Box pointed to nearly ice - sheet - wide melting on Greenland, with extensive surface melting documented for first time at the highest elevations of ice sheet, and the longest melt season since satellite observations began in 1979.

The P - 3 Orion, based at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia, will carry IceBridge's most comprehensive instrument suite: a scanning laser altimeter that measures surface elevation, three types of radar systems to study ice layers and the bedrock underneath the ice sheet, a high - resolution camera to create color maps of polar ice, and infrared cameras to measure surface temperatures of sea and land ice.

The higher - frequency «solar photons», if reflected by something on the surface (be it an ice - sheet, a body of water, or someone's windshield) will happily change course and zip right out of the atmosphere again, completely unaffected by GHGs (though not by cloud, of course.)

... Polar amplification explains in part why Greenland Ice Sheet and the West Antarctic Ice Sheet appear to be highly sensitive to relatively small increases in CO2 concentration and global mean temperature... Polar amplification occurs if the magnitude of zonally averaged surface temperature change at high latitudes exceeds the globally averaged temperature change, in response to climate forcings and on time scales greater than the annual cycle.

The surface elevations of the West Antarctic ice sheet are about half as high as those of East Antarctica.

Combined climate / ice sheet model estimates in which the Greenland surface temperature was as high during the Eemian as indicated by the NEEM ice core record suggest that loss of less than about 1 m sea level equivalent is very unlikely (e.g. Robinson et al. (2011).

Higher temperatures in polar regions and a decrease in the salinity of surface water due to melting ice sheets could interrupt such circulation, the report says.

And older climate models did not include dynamic ice sheet vulnerabilities — like high latent - heat ocean water coming into contact with the submerged faces of sea - fronting glaciers, the ability of surface melt water to break up glaciers by pooling into cracks and forcing them apart (hydrofracturing), or the innate rigidity and frailty of steep ice cliffs which render them susceptible to rapid toppling.

What Alley skips over so glibly is all of the complicated processes that go on within the ice sheet, starting from the highest level where new snow coats the surface and continuing down into the debths through the compacting firn into the «solid» ice beneath.

Due to the high elevation of the Antarctic ice sheet and to the cold, dry and thin polar atmosphere, up to 40 % of the total MSU tropopspheric signal actually comes from the surface (Johanson and Fu 2007).

The runaway greenhouse effect has several meanings ranging from, at the low end, global warming sufficient to induce out - of - control amplifying feedbacks, such as ice sheet disintegration and melting of methane hydrates, to, at the high end, a Venus - like hothouse with crustal carbon baked into the atmosphere and a surface temperature of several hundred degrees, a climate state from which there is no escape.

To avoid long response times in extreme climates, today's ice sheets are assigned surface properties of the tundra, thus allowing them to have a high albedo snow cover in cold climates but darker vegetation in warm climates.

In just a few days, the area of the ice sheet with surface melting increased from about 40 % to 97 %, including Summit Station, Greenland's highest and coldest spot.