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What does the land under Antarctica’s ice sheet look like?

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Re: What does the land under Antarctica’s ice sheet look like?

#11

Post by barryvan »

xwdv wrote: post #7

Antarctica looks like a very interesting land, perhaps because it is forbidden to us. Still, with that geography alone I wish we could swap its place with something like Australia. Perhaps with advanced geo-engineering it would be possible to someday rotate the earth in such a way that Australia ends up at the South Pole and Antarctica is uplifted to a warmer climate.

I think the Australians might have a few objections to that proposal... As one of them, I know I do at least!

It is interesting how much more archipelago-like Antarctica is. I wonder if that would mean fewer interior deserts than a large continent like Australia has

Re: What does the land under Antarctica’s ice sheet look like?

#12

Post by seanmcdirmid »

barryvan wrote: post #11
xwdv wrote: post #7

Antarctica looks like a very interesting land, perhaps because it is forbidden to us. Still, with that geography alone I wish we could swap its place with something like Australia. Perhaps with advanced geo-engineering it would be possible to someday rotate the earth in such a way that Australia ends up at the South Pole and Antarctica is uplifted to a warmer climate.

I think the Australians might have a few objections to that proposal... As one of them, I know I do at least! It is interesting how much more archipelago-like Antarctica is. I wonder if that would mean fewer interior deserts than a large continent like Australia has

Doesn’t Antarctica technically have the largest deserts in the world?

Re: What does the land under Antarctica’s ice sheet look like?

#15

Post by thorin »

Tepix wrote: post #13

Are there any interesting sci-fi novels or games that take place in the (far) future in Antarctica with humanity being forced away from the equator by the increasing temperatures?

It's obviously incredibly dated now, but I used to absolutely love this game on the Amiga in the 90s - Midwinter

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midwinter_(video_game)

Re: What does the land under Antarctica’s ice sheet look like?

#16

Post by frogulis »

hackerman123469 wrote: post #4

I wonder if the locations researchers are staying at are located on top of the land or if it's just randomly located and could be either. Like if all (or a majority of) the ice melted how big of an impact would it have on the locations?

McMurdo station (the biggest one) is standing on land and does thaw in summer [1]. That's on an island at the outskirts of Antarctica though, so I don't imagine it's representative of stations elsewhere on the continent.

[1] https://brr.fyi/posts/mud-murdo

Re: What does the land under Antarctica’s ice sheet look like?

#17

Post by placebo »

jl6 wrote: post #5

Note that this isn’t necessarily what the continent would look like if all the ice melts. The lack of ice weight would allow the land to rebound upwards: https://polarjournal.ch/en/2022/07/13/what-greenland-and-ant...

Also, what is the relative sea level for this map - is it the same as the current one or what it will be like after the ice melts

Re: What does the land under Antarctica’s ice sheet look like?

#18

Post by nirimda »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #12
barryvan wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the Australians might have a few objections to that proposal... As one of them, I know I do at least! It is interesting how much more archipelago-like Antarctica is. I wonder if that would mean fewer interior deserts than a large continent like Australia has

Doesn’t Antarctica technically have the largest deserts in the world?

Only because it's at the south pole. If we tilted the earth a bit, it would warm up and start raining. But if we tilted the earth a bit, Australia could probably also get wetter. As far as I understand it, the dryness of Australia, the Sahara etc are caused by the particular location from the equator, where moist air is lifted and brought to the equator and dumped there as rain. So if we pushed Australia further from the equator it would get a bit damper and maybe Indonesia would dry out.

I recommend we don't adopt this program of rotating the earth. It's almost certainly worse than just inventing fission power and pumping desalinated sea water to wherever we want to de-desertify. We'd probably also be better off if we wasted quintillions of dollaeuroyuans on a program to terraform Mars that ends in complete failure and the deaths of millions of workers over a century, but that's also an outcome I recommend we avoid.

Re: What does the land under Antarctica’s ice sheet look like?

#20

Post by nirimda »

barryvan wrote: post #11
xwdv wrote: post #7

Antarctica looks like a very interesting land, perhaps because it is forbidden to us. Still, with that geography alone I wish we could swap its place with something like Australia. Perhaps with advanced geo-engineering it would be possible to someday rotate the earth in such a way that Australia ends up at the South Pole and Antarctica is uplifted to a warmer climate.

I think the Australians might have a few objections to that proposal... As one of them, I know I do at least! It is interesting how much more archipelago-like Antarctica is. I wonder if that would mean fewer interior deserts than a large continent like Australia has

> I think the Australians might have a few objections to that proposal... As one of them, I know I do at least!

Well, Australia claims about half of Antarctica so as long as we can enforce that claim maybe it's not the end of the country. Just have to declare part of it "New Southern New South Wales" and take it from there.

> I wonder if that would mean fewer interior deserts than a large continent like Australia has.

There Arabian pensinsula are the Sahara are surrounded on three sides by sea, but they're still very dry. The Sahara and Arabian deserts go right up to the coast. As mentioned in my reply to your other reply, as far as I know it's not a lack of water but what happens to the water once it's evaporated that causes the dryness in those areas - it goes up into the high atmosphere and comes down in rain over the tropics. Wish I remembered the name though.

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