Sentences with phrase «where ice deposits»

Not exact matches

Researchers using NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) have found eight sites where thick deposits of ice beneath Mars» surface are exposed in faces of eroding slopes.

Where fractures reached the surface, this vapor could escape energetically, carrying with it ice and salt particles and depositing them on the surface.

«This deposit is probably more accessible than most water ice on Mars, because it is at a relatively low latitude and it lies in a flat, smooth area where landing a spacecraft would be easier than at some of the other areas with buried ice,» researcher Jack Holt of the University of Texas said in a statement.

Ice has a huge albedo compared to everything else, and represents an enormous reservoir of cold fresh water deposited on continent - sized chunks of the globe (not to mention winter snowfall in regions where it isn't «permanent» and glaciers where it is).

But the center's pitch also includes access to deep - water environments such as beneath the ice caps where energy companies are seeking to explore new deposits of oil and natural gas, including in the Arctic, which is now more accessible because of the warming climate.

[1] Originally thought to occur only in the outer regions of the Solar System where temperatures are low and water ice is common, significant deposits of methane clathrate have been found under sediments on the ocean floors of Earth.

Imputities are a main problem in Greenland ice cores where a mix of seasalt / carbonate and acidic dust from Icelandic volcanoes can produce CO2 in situ, but is less of interest in deep inland Antarctic ice cores, except during the deepest times of glacials, when far more dust is deposited.

[1] Originally thought to occur only in the outer regions of the Solar System, where temperatures are low and water ice is common, significant deposits of methane clathrate have been found under sediments on the ocean floors of the Earth.

RealClimate is wonderful, and an excellent source of reliable information.As I've said before, methane is an extremely dangerous component to global warming.Comment # 20 is correct.There is a sharp melting point to frozen methane.A huge increase in the release of methane could happen within the next 50 years.At what point in the Earth's temperature rise and the rise of co2 would a huge methane melt occur?No one has answered that definitive issue.If I ask you all at what point would huge amounts of extra methane start melting, i.e at what temperature rise of the ocean near the Artic methane ice deposits would the methane melt, or at what point in the rise of co2 concentrations in the atmosphere would the methane melt, I believe that no one could currently tell me the actual answer as to where the sharp melting point exists.Of course, once that tipping point has been reached, and billions of tons of methane outgass from what had been locked stores of methane, locked away for an eternity, it is exactly the same as the burning of stored fossil fuels which have been stored for an eternity as well.And even though methane does not have as long a life as co2, while it is around in the air it can cause other tipping points, i.e. permafrost melting, to arrive much sooner.I will reiterate what I've said before on this and other sites.Methane is a hugely underreported, underestimated risk.How about RealClimate attempts to model exactly what would happen to other tipping points, such as the melting permafrost, if indeed a huge increase in the melting of the methal hydrate ice WERE to occur within the next 50 years.My amateur guess is that the huge, albeit temporary, increase in methane over even three or four decades might push other relevent tipping points to arrive much, much, sooner than they normally would, thereby vastly incresing negative feedback mechanisms.We KNOW that quick, huge, changes occured in the Earth's climate in the past.See other relevent posts in the past from Realclimate.Climate often does not change slowly, but undergoes huge, quick, changes periodically, due to negative feedbacks accumulating, and tipping the climate to a quick change.Why should the danger from huge potential methane releases be vievwed with any less trepidation?