Originally, I had planned to modify this and put the possible future temperatures on there. I really didn't have time today. I'll see if I can do that tomorrow, but no promises. However, if you look at everything from the Transantarctic mountains over onto the peninsula, note that the summer temperatures if you oversimplify and just jack up the temperature 25 C, then you get summer temperatures of between 5 and 25 C. Winter temperatures are between -10 and 15 C depending on location.
Topsoil might be an issue. Any technologies to rapidly produce it?
Topsoil might be an issue. Any technologies to rapidly produce it?
Well, if the ice cap is gone, maritime effects are going to kick in pretty strongly. So, West Antarctica is going to be an archipelago -- sort of a cold Indonesia -- while East Antarctica is going to be a big solid cratonic lump of continent, sort of like Australia.
ReplyDeleteI would expect the archipelago to be stormy as hell. Antarctica Major, less so -- the problem there would be dryness. Much of Antarctica is a cold desert, after all, and I'm not sure how much warming would change that.
Doug M.
As I think about it, I'm not sure jacking up the temperature 25 C is a good idea.
ReplyDeleteAustralia hasn't been that warm since the Eocene. And the only reason it was so warm then was that the Circum-Polar Current didn't exist yet. The CPC is what isolates Antarctica from the rest of the planet, allowing it to get much cooler than the Arctic.
I don't think we can get rid of the CPC without rearranging some continents. Ergo, I don't think the bulk of Antarctica can be warmed without warming the rest of the planet by about the same amount. And a 25 C increase would render most of the planet uninhabitable, and probably trigger runaway greenhouse to boot.
(It's true that the Antarctic Penninsula is warming up very quickly. But the AP is an anomalous little finger that sticks pretty far north.)
Doug M.
I wasn't assuming that all of Antarctica was going to be warmed that much. The AP and the whole of what is Western Antarctica was what I was thinking of.
ReplyDelete'Mainland' Antarctica (ie the other side of the Transantarctic Mountains) remains largely unchanged (5 C+ is what our friend here said but that's still damned cold).
The AP is still south of the CPC, right? Sooo...
As for the rest of the planet that's not Antarctica, it's very contingent on where you are as to what your temperatures are going to be. Central Asia, the Med, and the Middle East are supposed to scorched. Bad. The researcher was questioning inhabitability (15C+ there), but that's probably stretching it.
Honestly, I don't remember what Oz's delta_t was supposed to be. It might be toasty. It might be roasty. It might be rare. I just don't remember.
It a /lot/, I might even venture a dangerously stupid opinion of a majority, of the models indicate the American Midwest doesn't get much change at all. Which I find weird. God must like Wisconsinites (cue Carlos), Iowans, etc.
He definitely does NOT like the South.