Why is the Northern Hemisphere ice area decreasing while the Southern Hemisphere ice is increasing?

Question

http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.anom.south.jpg

http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.anom.jpg

http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.365.south.jpg

Answer 1

On what do you base your conclusion that Southern Hemisphere ice is increasing?   Your linked plot looks pretty flat to me, with maybe a tiny upswing over the past few months, probably due to increased snowfall from warming (normally it's too cold for precipitation to form in Antarctica).

"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 "

http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.rss....

The reason Northern Hemisphere ice is melting faster is because there's more land area in the NH, more ocean area in the SH.  Oceans warm more slowly than land.

Answer 2

antartica is decreasing:

http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2006/mar...

the effects are not as dramatic as the arctic because antartica has a much colder average temperature.

the increase in ice mass is in eastern antartica which is the coldest area of the planet - even during the warmest part of the year eastern antartica rarely goes above freezing.

The increase is due to increased snow fall - the snow falls because heat in another area puts water into the atmosphere then it falls out over eastern antartica. The western part is losing ice mass.

edit

note that antartica is a landmass - unlike the north pole which is an ocean (completely sea ice)

Answer 3

.  According to NASA research, an overall net loss of ice is occurring in Greenland.  The annual ice loss in Greenland has doubled to 200 km3 in the past decade.  NASA Grace experiments show an overall loss in mass of Antarctic ice.  In fact, the cryosphere, including permafrost and glaciers, is showing an overall decrease in mass from that of previous decades (Buis).

Answer 4

It's not.

"University of Colorado at Boulder researchers have used data from a pair of NASA satellites orbiting Earth in tandem to determine that the Antarctic ice sheet, which harbors 90 percent of Earth's ice, has lost significant mass in recent years."

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2...

But nice unfounded assertion with no link, nonetheless ;-)

Edit:

You failed to use the term "sea ice" in your question. So I obviously thought your concern was with all "Southern Hemisphere ice", which when including Antarctica definitely appears to be decreasing:

http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/vaop/...

One possible explanation is that so much land-based ice from Antarctica is sliding into the sea that much of the sea ice is actually coming from land.

Answer 5

The poles are shifting as they've done in the past.  This changes Earth's atmospheric conditions.

Answer 6

Ice VOLUME is decreasing in both hemispheres.  Volume is what counts.

Answer 7

char

global warming

We definitely didn't start global warming, but we definitely do contribute to it now.

Natural gas (or Methane along with other thanes) for example, is completely a natural contributer to global warming and is derived pretty much the same way as oil. ie. Matter (animal, plant etc) decomposes over time resulting in a anaerobic (hope I spelled that right) decay of non-fossil organic material / gas (natural gas or methane).

One problem with global warming is that the concept is so vague in the minds of the people. The critical interpretation is basically how it’s explained in school and the news. However most of the public see global warming connected with the ozone and pollutants which cause harmful greenhouse gasses, etc. therefore investigating and fighting for things like alternative energy (ie. Solar, wind, hydrogen, ethanol, biodiesel, etc)

Greenhouse gases are real and do contribute to global warming. Think of the different gas layers like ozone (o3) that circumference the globe as the clear plastic on a greenhouse. Longer rays of light from the Sun go in and reflect off different thermal masses bouncing back and creating shorter lengths of energy that cannot exist the plastic barrier. These beams then just continue to bounce around inside the green house until they’re finally absorbed completely (some do escape but very few), thereby warming the greenhouse greatly even in cold temperatures.

Basically there are 2 ways that this reaction (or lack of) affects the planet. Global warming and global cooling.

1. as we add to the gases in the stratosphere, where the ozone layer is (Carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, etc), we add to the plastic of the greenhouse, trapping more short wave length energy and heating the earth more.

2. as we deplete the ozone (with chlorofluorocarbons or CFCs), we allow more long wave length energy, which bounces back out to space without heating any thermal masses on earth, thereby cooling the planet.

It’s pretty easy to see the results..

Melting ice sheets & glaciers

Floods & droughts

Great hurricanes & cyclones

Seasonal extremes

Seasonal phenomena’s

Species extinction

New & resurgent diseases

There are many ways to stop both global warming and cooling from accruing or at least slow them down until we can discover a way to reverse it, but Stop burning fossil fuels is the biggest.

I currently own 2 converted h2 vehicles which run on 100% hydrogen and 1 EV (electric vehicle), not to mention our home is completely off the grid, using alternative energy (solar, wind, etc)

If you interested I offer several DIY alternative guides to walk you step by step threw Greener living, how to run your car on alternative fuels and being self-sufficient, at agua-luna com or

http://www.agua-luna.com/guides.html

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Retired Boeing Engineer now living 100% Off-the-Grid with my family, using Alternative Energy & loving every minute.

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Answer 8

everything between the poles is freezing

Answer 9

I think that the ice is migrating south. In another thousand or so years, it's instinct will be to migrate back to the north. It's all very natural, and nothing to be alarmed about.

Answer 10

Excellent question.  It certainly is a poser isn't it.  No wait, the answer is you made it up and as others have pointed out, ice is decreasing in both hemispheres.  The thing is, strawman arguments like this work on the internet, but out in the real world, where it counts, they don't.  Reliance on this tactic is why skeptics, even if they are doing it only to satisfy some weird need for attention, are seen as intellectually bankrupt and pretty much ignored except by dimwits like Inhofe.