Is global warming melting the Antarctic ice sheets?

Question

Or is it just the arctic ice?

Answer 1

yes sadly and in canada the permafrost is melting and giving out gasses that would increase global warming

Answer 2

yes global warming is causing the ice sheets to melt but that is not the issue... the issue is what is causing global warming? most common answer is us, but no one really knows for sure.

Answer 3

Global warming is melting all the ice caps even the Antarctic.

The Antarctic has more ice than Arctic.

Glaciers are even melting and it's snowing less every year

Answer 4

no such thing as global warming ..its just something else the goverments have made up to get more tax money off everyone..we have had climate changes in the world since the beginning of time..what was that blamed on?? the cave men using to much wood for their fires ?? or the dinosaurs  farting to much.......its a big con.........

Answer 5

it is the temperature of the ocean current that is melting the ice and since it is already in the water the ocean will show little if any rise but as the ice on the land mass melts that will cause the rise of the ocean's level

Answer 6

This is a questions that continues to puzzle scientists but one group may be close to solving the ice sheet mystery.

A team of scientists from Cardiff University’s School of Earth and Ocean Sciences and Amgueddfa Cymru - National Museum Wales travelled to Africa to find new evidence of climate change which helps explain some of the mystery surrounding the appearance of the Antarctic ice sheet.

Ice sheet formation in the Antarctic is one of the most important climatic shifts in Earth’s history. However, previous temperature records show no evidence of the oceans cooling at this time, but instead suggest they actually warmed, presenting a confusing picture of the climate system which has long been a mystery in palaeoclimatology.

Now Dr Carrie Lear, Lecturer in Palaeoceanography, and her team at Cardiff have presented new temperature records using ancient sea floor mud recovered from Tanzania, East Africa. The shell chemistry of pin-head sized animals called foraminifera (“forams”) reveal that ocean temperatures did in fact cool by about 2.50C.

Answer 7

Watch "An Inconvenient Truth" By Al Gore. He has the facts to back it up.

Answer 8

The area known as the Antarctic peninsula has warmed significantly (about 3 C) and is clearly losing ice mass.  Recent studies have also concluded that part of the massive West Antarctic Ice Sheet is also loosing mass.

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?re...

Edit:

Tomcat - As land-based ice sheets calve and fall into the ocean during the summer, an increase in sea ice during the winter is exactly what scientists expected.  It's similar to taking ice cubes out of your freezer and putting them into your glass of water. The water will cool and if exposed to cold (which happens every year during the winter) more ice will form than would have occurred if the ice cubes (or in this case land-based ice sheets) had never gone into the water.

For those who still wrongly think there is no warming in the southern hemisphere, you might want to take a look at these graphs:

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs...

http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/temp/jonesc...

And you might want to contact the authors of this paper to tell them Antarctica is actually cooling:

http://ams.allenpress.com/perlserv/?requ...

"Of particular note is the occurrence of widespread positive temperature trends during summer since the 1990s, the season when melt occurs"

Answer 9

Neither.

Answer 10

I was in Antarctica 4 years ago, the scientists working down there told me that the main body of the continent (97% of the land area) is getting colder. Only the peninsular (3% of the land area) is loosing ice, and that is due to erosion from sea currents.

This was at a time when the media was full of ' the ice caps are melting, we are all going to drown' hype.

The man made global warming doomsday predictions are pure fantasy. They have everything to do with Al Gore's anger at loosing the presidental election, and nothing to do with solid science

Answer 11

Actually yeah, you wouldn't think so but the greenhouse effect, global warming, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are all having an affect. Because there is such an excessive amount of carbon dioxide, and the pollution, etc global warming is causing the ice sheets melt, and possibly in a couple hundred or thousands of year, most of the world will be underwater.

Answer 12

If you are a believer then any change in the climate is due to global warming.  It is a loony cult.

Answer 13

No, the Southern Hemisphere does not cooperate with global warming, Antarctica has set all time records for maximum sea ice extent, and the continent as a whole has cooled for decades.

http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/...

Answer 14

well duh.

global warming is heating up the earth, melting the icecaps and making our oceans rise.

Answer 15

ALL OF IT! its fecking up the weather, making hot contries hotter and cold contries hot and global floodings WERE ALL DOOMED!!!!!!!....................dommed I tellsya!

Answer 16

Yes. Both.

Answer 17

Yes it is happening all to fast..all these uni types (impressing their mums) have been telling us in x years so and so. But us who defrost freezers know once it has started..........

Answer 18

Actually the entire southern hemisphere is cooling not warming. It is just the northern hemisphere that is warming.