It actually makes sense that even though there is a decline of the antarctic ice shelves, The center of the continent is still accumulating ice and snow at a steady pace. That would be ideal for insulation and would be much easier to remove than rock and soil. The the question is how is it that on an annual basis It is accumulating 200 billion tons of snow and ice. But the outer shelves are melting, due to climate change and the planet hitting record highs some years.🤔

47 minutes ago, Coty-jak said:

It actually makes sense that even though there is a decline of the antarctic ice shelves, The center of the continent is still accumulating ice and snow at a steady pace. That would be ideal for insulation and would be much easier to remove than rock and soil. The the question is how is it that on an annual basis It is accumulating 200 billion tons of snow and ice. But the outer shelves are melting, due to climate change and the planet hitting record highs some years.🤔

Do you have a quotable source for this information ?

3 hours ago, studiot said:

Do you have a quotable source for this information ?

Yep. Reasonable to request a cite, in keeping with forum rules.

And one should look at average temps in the center of Antarctic and underneath how both altitude and latitude affect what happens as currents of warmer, moisture laden air move in. One complexity of GW is that some places get greater precipitation and some get less than before as you pump more energy into the system.

19 hours ago, Coty-jak said:

It actually makes sense that even though there is a decline of the antarctic ice shelves, The center of the continent is still accumulating ice and snow at a steady pace. That would be ideal for insulation and would be much easier to remove than rock and soil. The the question is how is it that on an annual basis It is accumulating 200 billion tons of snow and ice. But the outer shelves are melting, due to climate change and the planet hitting record highs some years.🤔

There has been no overall 'accumulation at a steady pace', only a few years of rebound within a longer decline, that in very unlikely to persist. Antarctic ice mass has been declining at an average of around 140 Gigatonnes per year since Grace satellite measurement began in 2002.

https://earth.gov/sealevel/rails/active_storage/blobs/redirect/eyJfcmFpbHMiOnsibWVzc2FnZSI6IkJBaHBBc2dKIiwiZXhwIjpudWxsLCJwdXIiOiJibG9iX2lkIn19--cb8a3a0bbedbda841e308fad122db622593644ac/ais_gris_with_vel_i_200204-202311_2160p25.mp4?disposition=inline

Yes there has been some rebound in ice mass since 2021 from some years of higher than average snowfalls. Ice mass loss is effectively the difference between snowfall and glacier discharge and there are a lot of factors in play..

Ice shelves are glacier/ice sheet discharge. There has been a trend of ice sheet thinning and loss of underpinning contact with seamounts, resulting in acceleration of ice flows from the loss of buttressing.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07049-0

Sea ice is frozen seawater and isn't a factor for sea level rise.

9 minutes ago, Ken Fabian said:

There has been no overall 'accumulation at a steady pace', only a few years of rebound within a longer decline, that in very unlikely to persist. Antarctic ice mass has been declining at an average of around 140 Gigatonnes per year since Grace satellite measurement began in 2002.

https://earth.gov/sealevel/rails/active_storage/blobs/redirect/eyJfcmFpbHMiOnsibWVzc2FnZSI6IkJBaHBBc2dKIiwiZXhwIjpudWxsLCJwdXIiOiJibG9iX2lkIn19--cb8a3a0bbedbda841e308fad122db622593644ac/ais_gris_with_vel_i_200204-202311_2160p25.mp4?disposition=inline

Yes there has been some rebound in ice mass since 2021 from some years of higher than average snowfalls. Ice mass loss is effectively the difference between snowfall and glacier discharge and there are a lot of factors in play..

Ice shelves are glacier/ice sheet discharge. There has been a trend of ice sheet thinning and loss of underpinning contact with seamounts, resulting in acceleration of ice flows from the loss of buttressing.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07049-0

Sea ice is frozen seawater and isn't a factor for sea level rise.

Thanks +1

7 hours ago, Ken Fabian said:

Sea ice is frozen seawater and isn't a factor for sea level rise.

I also thank you for a helpful data dive. And the reminder on buoyancy: melt a large iceberg and the ocean level is unchanged, thanks to that naked Greek fellow who was running around Athens shouting eureka. Ice only matters when it melts off a landmass - Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets being the two major potential contributors. A complete melt-off of Antarctica alone would raise sea level 58 meters. Greenland, 7.4 meters.

That's a dramatically different world map. Though from what I've seen going on in Florida, it's hard to get quite as alarmed as I once was about its possible vanishing beneath the waves. 😁

https://www.antarcticglaciers.org/glaciers-and-climate/what-is-the-global-volume-of-land-ice-and-how-is-it-changing/

15 minutes ago, TheVat said:

that naked Greek fellow who was running around Athens shouting eureka

I thought that was Syracuse in Sicily ( Southern Italy ).

Maybe Ken can do another 'deep dive' and find out why ice levels seem to be disappearing at a faster rate in the Northern hemisphere as compared to the Southern.
The slope of the ice loss graph seems much steeper for Greenland than Antartica; is the greater land mass just a larger heat sink or are other factors at play ?

3 minutes ago, MigL said:

I thought that was Syracuse in Sicily ( Southern Italy ).

Maybe Ken can do another 'deep dive' and find out why ice levels seem to be disappearing at a faster rate in the Northern hemisphere as compared to the Southern.
The slope of the ice loss graph seems much steeper for Greenland than Antartica; is the greater land mass just a larger heat sink or are other factors at play ?

Yes Archimedes lived in Syracuse. (Where I shall be in fact, 24hrs from now, for 5 days holiday with my son.)

Re N Hemisphere ice loss, could it be something to do with the transport of warm water in the Gulf Stream/N. Atlantic Drift?

Have a great time in Sicily; the cactus fruit, or 'prickly pears', are great.

29 minutes ago, MigL said:

Have a great time in Sicily; the cactus fruit, or 'prickly pears', are great.

I'll look out for them. Ortygia, Agrigento, Piazza Armerina, and maybe Selinunte, will be on the list. (My son read Ancient History so these places will be of interest to him.)

Mille grazie, both @MigL and @exchemist for restoring Archimedes to his correct location.

6 hours ago, MigL said:

The slope of the ice loss graph seems much steeper for Greenland than Antartica; is the greater land mass just a larger heat sink or are other factors at play ?

As exchemist did I wondered if the AMOC was a factor. There's also the fact that Earth perihelion falls between Jan 2-15, so a northern landmass gets a little more insolation in the winter. It seems sufficiently complex that I would lie down and apply cold compresses until any notion of having figured it out passed.

5 hours ago, MigL said:

I thought that was Syracuse in Sicily ( Southern Italy ).

Maybe Ken can do another 'deep dive' and find out why ice levels seem to be disappearing at a faster rate in the Northern hemisphere as compared to the Southern.
The slope of the ice loss graph seems much steeper for Greenland than Antartica; is the greater land mass just a larger heat sink or are other factors at play ?

I was thinking that was a shallow dive and I'm not equipped with scuba... those waters run deep and aren't quite as cold as ice (apologies to JJ Cale fans).

Warming Southern Ocean water appears to be the greatest driver of ice mass loss via under-melt of those ice shelves (the main cause of thinning) and subsequent loss of 'buttressing' increasing glacier outflows. Direct surface air temperature warming with surface melt flowing down to glacier base and 'lubricating' (lifting the ice base above the underlying ground - another variation of loss of buttressing - where ice flow is less impeded) - seems less of a factor there than for Greenland. The Arctic including Greenland does have much greater Surface Air Temperature rise than Antarctica - than anywhere else. Greenland will be getting under-melt of ice shelves in addition.

Without diving as deep as this deserves - Antarctica is more isolated from the rest of the global climate system than anywhere else, not only because the Southern Hemisphere has more ocean and is warming a bit slower than Northern but from that huge surrounding buffer of Southern Ocean.

From the linked Nature article it sounds like that loss of buttressing and raised glacial outflows is effectively irreversible even (if it were to occur) with persistent increase in snowfall; the lag between snowfall increase in the catchment and glacier outflows will be too long to affect the near term acceleration of outflows - and it will take a LOT more sustained snowfall to keep ahead of that.

The possibility that warmer Antarctic air temperatures would result in greater snowfalls (and rising Antarctic ice mass) did seem a realistic possibility to earlier scientists but reality is not heading that direction. Some regions are indeed gaining ice mass but others are losing more.

I still expect Antarctica to throw up some surprises.