Why do people believe ice melts when it's 40 below?

Question

How many times do you hear the desperate pleas of believers sounding the alarms that arctic ice is melting during the dead of winter when the temperatures are 40 below?

Why would anyone think the ice melts in winter? The arctic ice is getting thicker, gaining mass right now. There is no melting of the polar ice caps.

Answer 1

Because if they don't believe this, it destroys their beliefs in global warming.

You can't speak to these folks logically. Global warming is like a religion to them, so facts will not change their opinion.

Answer 2

One word....(Omission).

Answer 3

I love how a couple of them are trying to change their tune, since they don't know that the Ice will actually recede more this Summer or not. My best guess, due to how cold it's been this Winter that it won't melt as much as it did last summer.

It's funny how we haven't heard a thing about Antarctica, since it's the Summer months in the Southern Hemisphere. I bet it's because there hasn't been any melting or significant melting down there yet.

Answer 4

Who believes this?  To answer your question, I have not heard the desperate plea.

Answer 5

ice melts in 0 degrees and i dunno who told that it melts in that temperature and glaciers now are decreaing i know they have a cycle but it is becoming low.

Answer 6

Because Al Gore said so and he knows everything.

He traumatized children when he told them that the polar bears are drowning and they believed him even though polar bear populations have been increasing for decades now.

Truth is not important when it comes to the global warming hype.

Answer 7

who thinks this? the arctic seas ice mass grows each winter and shrinks each summer - i have never heard anyone claim otherwise. However, the summer minimum is becoming smaller and smaller each year:

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroo...

Answer 8

"There is no melting of the polar ice caps."  Are you claiming that it's 40 below on both poles?

In the arctic the problem is the trend towards a decrease in perennial ice, the thicker multi-season ice that is not involved in seasonal thaw and refreeze.

You can see a video of the 2007 record-breaking summer melt and perennial ice sheet loss here at NASA:

http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a000000/a00...

Other NASA ice melt videos are available here, including multi-year videos that show increasing areas of melt on Greenland:

http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/search/Keyword/...

The Antarctic has recently been measured to be losing total ice mass as well.  

"Over the 10 year time period of the survey, the ice sheet as a whole was certainly losing mass, and the mass loss increased by 75% during this time. Most of the mass loss is from the Amundsen Sea sector of West Antarctica and the northern tip of the Peninsula where it is driven by ongoing, pronounced glacier acceleration. In East Antarctica, the mass balance is near zero, but the thinning of its potentially vulnerable marine sectors suggests this may change in the near future."

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/200...

Apparently you think you know more than the hundreds of scientists (thousands?) studying the cryosphere.

Answer 9

I think they have (possibly like the author of the question) confused two different things. See the other very good answers on seasonal changes in the ice and the links to NASA images- it grows in winter, it shrinks in summer, different amounts each year, but as the Earth is getting slowly warmer it is shrinking more and more, on average, in summer. It might be minus 40 now in midwinter in the Arctic, but it won't be in the summer.

And for the next bit I will leave out "on average" where I should be using it a lot, to make this easier to read:

In the Arctic there is no land under the vast majority of the ice, and the ice is also melting more and more quickly each spring, leaving some of the polar bears -and other animals- with longer and longer swims to the remaining ice or solid land. There were always a few drowned bears, but scientists believe that more bears are drowning now. Polar bears don't live in the Antarctic, but if they did there is much more land under the ice and in theory they would have a lot less far to swim.

These are not sudden things, but gradual changes. And there will still be cooler and warmer years from year to year, like always- it's the overall slow change in average temperatures which is called Global Warming. This year in the UK it's been a wet, warmish winter so far, but in some of the USA you've had some cold heavy snow weather- the weather systems work differently with the warming and can even send someone's rain to another country or make once region cold and another hot. If the Gulf Stream fails, the UK could become colder, if it manages to keep going, we'll probably get hotter; no-one is quite sure yet. And as the sea rises we'll all have to move to higher ground anyway- the Thames flood barrier in London is already less able to withstand very high floods than when it was built, because of the slow change in sea level, and the increase of violent windy storms. Weather is complicated stuff!

Answer 10

I am really worried about drowning from rising ocean levels as the NASA studies says:

"Ice loss in Antarctica increased by 75 percent in the last 10 years due to a speed-up in the flow of its glaciers and is now nearly as great as that observed in Greenland, according to a new, comprehensive study by NASA and university scientists.

In a first-of-its-kind study, an international team led by Eric Rignot of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., and the University of California, Irvine, estimated changes in Antarctica's ice mass between 1996 and 2006 and mapped patterns of ice loss on a glacier-by-glacier basis. They detected a sharp jump in Antarctica's ice loss, from enough ice to raise global sea level by 0.3 millimeters (.01 inches) a year in 1996, to 0.5 millimeters (.02 inches) a year in 2006."

I feel like cutting down old growth forest to build and ark.

Answer 11

You do know that it isn't winter in the Antarctic, and that they have ice there, too, right?

Answer 12

Ice melts from below the surface when heat is available to do the job. This happens and in fact the major reason for the ice age cycle is warming and cooling from beneath the surface. No one knows this at this time and few care for sure but the little data available indicates the energy needed to power the ice cycles upwells from the mantle into the ocean. The energy flux is quite high and completely unknown to current science types.

Answer 13

Polar ice melts during summer months and rebounds during winter months. The problem is that summer ice minimums are becoming smaller and smaller in the Arctic.

Also, Ice loss in Antarctica increased by 75 percent in the last 10 years due to a speed-up in the flow of its glaciers and is now nearly as great as that observed in Greenland, according to a new, comprehensive study by NASA and university scientists.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/200...

Answer 14

At 40 below the ice does not melt. But during the summer months there is evidence that the polar cap is shrinking...

Answer 15

Clearly, lots of people are NOT paying attention to what is going on around them, THEY are in their own world......that does not deteriorate from use and abuse, how lucky for them!  The Truth is, it is sickening how far things have had to come for the realization to sink in " WE are partly responsible to the Earths' creator for having damaged it so badly"

For people that do not see how it currently is they must have their eyes closed.  I think there was a reference to that line in Al Gore's movie, which DID win acclaim AND Award!

In California, it really is funny to see the stickers "keep tahoe blue" on ginormus S U V's!  Defeating the very cause they claim to be supporting.  

The question is not how bad things have to be before it hits the radar of the general public any longer, it is now WHAT are YOU going to do to play your part in making the Planet a better place to live for Everyone on it ?

Answer 16

I think Dr. jello is refering to the inland ice sheets, not the sea ice.

And Dr. jello is right because as the surrounding sea ice melts, it becomes open sea, which speeds up evaporation from that spot, that, in the past couldnt evaporate because it was ice.  I believe this is responsible for the increased precipitation seen over greenland and antarctica.  Basically, this would mean that the surrounding sea ice expands and contracts over a longer period of time.

When there is a lot of sea ice, it keeps the air around that area drier because water cant evaporate off the surface of the ocean.  This decreases precipitation over the inner ice sheets.  Also, drier air is generally colder because it doesnt have any moisture to hold the heat.  This is what I believe is happening now.