The Ghost Plumes - 4

Fig. 1 The Long Ice Wall

Scientist R. Bindschadler, along with several other authors, detailed the coastline (or should I say "iceline") of Antarctica (Getting around Antarctica: new high-resolution mappings of the grounded and freely-floating boundaries of the Antarctic ice sheet created for the International Polar Year, The Cryosphere, 5, 569–588, 2011).

The authors of that paper stated that "[t]he grounded ice boundary is 53 610 km long; 74 % abuts to floating ice shelves or outlet glaciers, 19 % is adjacent to open or sea-ice covered ocean, and 7 % of the boundary ice terminates on land" (ibid, Abstract).

The 74% of "53,610 km long" and "27,521 km and is discontinuous" are figures in the paper that I want to focus on in this post (among other things).


The object of the use of that paper's conclusions is to determine a ball-park figure for thermodynamic plume flow volume along the world's longest wall of ice (Fig. 1).

Fig. 2 Where The action Is

Therefore the 74% of 53,610 km, which equals 39,671.4 km, is used for the hypothetical maximum length of the wall of ice, and the 27,521 km is used as the hypothetical minimum length of the wall of ice.

For "ball-park" (hypothetical) calculations I consider the "39,671.4 km" to be the cumulative maximum glacier widths, and the "27,521 km" to be the cumulative minimum glacier widths.

That is an enormous amount of ice from which the seawater around Antarctica can continuously generate melt water plumes, caused by heat flowing from warmer seawater into colder glacial ice.


That melting of the tidewater glaciers is taking place is not debatable, however, the amount of melt water in hypothetical thermodynamic plumes (Fig. 2) is quite debatable since the concept is "embryonic" at this point.

Fig. 3 Areas A-F

What I have done, with the benefit of the awesome help of Bindschadler et. alia (2011) is to make more accurate ball-park calculations than those which were done in previous posts of this series (The Ghost Plumes, 2, 3).

The calculations presented today are stored in AppendicesA, B, C, D, E, and F.

The appendices relate to the areas shown in Fig. 3.

The calculations are based on actual in situ measurements taken over the years then stored in the World Ocean Database (WOD) and then converted into TEOS-10 values.

Those measurements are stored in the WOD to be used by researchers like you and me.


The calculations depicted in the appendices are organized by area, zone, year, and "type of calculation".

By type of calculation I mean plume volume, plume buoyancy coefficient,  plume height, and plume width.

Also, based on the painstaking measurements by Bindschadler et. alia (2011) derived from satellite data, I also estimated the maximum and minimum plume potentials for each area.

The appendices detail the zone and annual data first, then there is an area summary at the end of each appendix.

The summary is the average of each zone, each year, and each category of measurement (e.g. average plume height, width, and melt water flow).

You can compare the hypothetical maximum and minimum with the actual measurements averaged over decades.

Remember that all in situ measurements were converted to TEOS-10 values.


Mean averages for all Areas, Zones, and Years:

West Indian Ocean (Area A)
p^W theoretical min = 5.35131e+06 m
p^W theoretical max = 7.71388e+06 m

Zones in Area: 10, Zones with data: 10
Annual Per Zone Average: p^F = 398179 m³ hr
Annual Area Average: p^F = 3.98179e+06 m³ hr

East Indian Ocean (Area B)
p^W theoretical min = 6.88025e+06 m
p^W theoretical max = 9.91785e+06 m

Zones in Area: 9, Zones with data: 9
Annual Per Zone Average: p^F = 401527 m³ hr
Annual Area Average: p^F = 3.61374e+06 m³ hr

Ross Sea (Area C)
p^W theoretical min = 3.82236e+06 m
p^W theoretical max = 5.50992e+06 m

Zones in Area: 15, Zones with data: 15
Annual Per Zone Average: p^F = 164113 m³ hr
Annual Area Average: p^F = 2.46169e+06 m³ hr

Amundsen Sea (Area D)
p^W theoretical min = 3.05789e+06 m
p^W theoretical max = 4.40793e+06 m

Zones in Area: 8, Zones with data: 8
Annual Per Zone Average: p^F = 423641 m³ hr
Annual Area Average: p^F = 3.38913e+06 m³ hr

Bellingshausen Sea (Area E)
p^W theoretical min = 3.82236e+06 m
p^W theoretical max= 5.50992e+06 m

Zones in Area: 10, Zones with data: 10
Annual Per Zone Average: p^F = 304782 m³ hr
Annual Area Average: p^F = 3.04782e+06 m³ hr

Weddell Sea (Area F)
p^W theoretical min = 4.58683e+06 m
p^W theoretical max = 6.6119e+06 m

Zones in Area: 12, Zones with data: 12
Annual Per Zone Average: p^F = 281132 m³ hr
Annual Area Average: p^F = 3.37358e+06 m³ hr

Legend
pF = plume flow (m³ hr)
pH = plume height (m)
pC = plume flow coefficient (m³ hr)
pW = plume width (m)

Total Annual Averages (from Section V above):

pF (3,981,790 + 3,613,740 + 2,461,690 + 3,389,130 + 3,047,820 + 3,373,580)
= 19,867,750 m³ hr


It would seem that an average (per Area) of almost twenty million cubic meters of melt water per hour is worth thinking about.

Glacial calving and basal melt are added to the thermodynamic melt water, so there is little wonder that scientists are taking "down under" seriously (The Race).

The previous post in this series is here.