West Antarctica Warming Faster Than Thought 247
New submitter dgrobinson writes "NY Times reports that West Antarctica has warmed more over the last half century than was first thought. A paper released Sunday by the journal Nature Geoscience (abstract) found that the temperature at a research station in the middle of West Antarctica has warmed by 4.4 degrees Fahrenheit since 1958. That is roughly twice as much as scientists previously thought and three times the overall rate of global warming, making central West Antarctica one of the fastest-warming regions on earth."
Re:West Antarctica? (Score:4, Interesting)
Thats only at the South Pole
Antarctica is BIG
Bigger than the 48 states
Melting Antartica (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, if we manage to melt Antartica, we are in hot waters!
Here is the sea rise interactive map [firetree.net]. You can choose how much sea level rise and see if you still live on land. I recall melting the whole Antartica would cause a sea rise of 70 meters. I do not know if it includes water thermal dilatation, but I hope it does.
Re:A single weather station? (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes. No need to retract your PhD, your whole domain is a sham.
Yes. That's why we produce the same structural data as the X-ray crystallography guys do with a completely different method.
Oh, I forgot to mention, the above was only the digital processing. Before the raw data - i.e. the signal of the receiver coils - get digitized, they run through a preamp, a couple of analog filters, the main amp and the a/d-converter, each component, even the cables in between, adding artifacts and distortions to the signal.
In summary, every non-trivial measurement yields heavily processed data. You just need to be aware how exactly you processed them. Science, it works, bitches.