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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?

#21

Post by qikInNdOutReply »

nirimda wrote: post #18
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 evidence does not seem to follow this logic.

There are lots of countries closer to the equator - they are wetter.. large body masses have continental clima, which enocourages the growth of dessert, but they usually do so only when the war of forrest vs savannah is lost by the forrest. Which can cling to areas quiet defiantly, for example the last big forrests in syria, that once covered the middle east

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

#22

Post by totetsu »

thorin wrote: post #15
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)

Wow it’s fascinating to see what games could be imagined in the era before all the genres were decided upon. Action rpg with strategy elements.

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

#23

Post by jameshart »

platz wrote: post #19

Why is there land at all at the south pole? Can't just be coincidence.

But there’s none at the North Pole.

One pattern that is curiously consistent is that broadly land tends to be antipodal to ocean (and not just because there’s more ocean in general - there’s a genuine statistical skew) - so having land at one pole and none at the other matches that overall pattern. (https://www.geodatos.net/en/antipodes)

Basically a surprisingly large proportion of antipodal pairs have land at one end and water at the other (although water-water is also common).

In other words it would certainly be more surprising to have land at both poles; and we should be unsurprised if we find land at neither or land at one and not the other.

So by that measure the poles are fairly typical of other antipodes.

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

#24

Post by jameshart »

thorin wrote: post #15
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)

Midwinter and Flames of Freedom were so far ahead of their time. It’s like Mike Singleton had a vision from the future of Just Cause or Far Cry or something and tried to build it using 90s technology.

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

#26

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

jameshart wrote: post #23
platz wrote: post #19

Why is there land at all at the south pole? Can't just be coincidence.

But there’s none at the North Pole. One pattern that is curiously consistent is that broadly land tends to be antipodal to ocean (and not just because there’s more ocean in general - there’s a genuine statistical skew) - so having land at one pole and none at the other matches that overall pattern. ( https://www.geodatos.net/en/antipodes ) Basically a surprisingly large proportion of antipodal pairs have land at one…

To me that really looks like pattern matching where there isn't actually any (though I'd like to know more details around the "statistical skew")- saying that there's a lot of antipodal land-water or water-water pairs only makes sense considering the vast majority of the planet is water.

Regardless, it's just an interesting snapshot in time considering continental drift.

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

#27

Post by cwmma »

placebo wrote: post #17
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

if all the ice in antarctic melted (and nothing else happened), it would cause sea levels in antarctic to fall. That's because all the ice currently there exerts enough of a gravitation pull to increase sea levels there now. That being said there would be other things like the melting of the Greenland ice sheet and thermal expansion of the oceans that would be acting to increase the sea level.

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

#28

Post by cwmma »

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...

I mean it's what the content would look like for a long time, Scandinavia is still not done rising from the last glacial period.

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

#29

Post by mFixman »

jameshart wrote: post #23
platz wrote: post #19

Why is there land at all at the south pole? Can't just be coincidence.

But there’s none at the North Pole. One pattern that is curiously consistent is that broadly land tends to be antipodal to ocean (and not just because there’s more ocean in general - there’s a genuine statistical skew) - so having land at one pole and none at the other matches that overall pattern. ( https://www.geodatos.net/en/antipodes ) Basically a surprisingly large proportion of antipodal pairs have land at one…

Is antipodal land a physical property of Earth's continents, or is it mathematical fact of distribution on spheres?

If we distribute chunks of land randomly on a sphere we would expect roughly the same amount of land on any randomly-chosen hemisphere. But what can we say about the average amount of land in the hemisphere with the most land?

My intuition says that in an Earth-like sphere, with 29% land and 71% water, there's a high chance of there existing a hemisphere with almost all of the land.

I have no idea how to prove this empirically, but it seems like a really nice maths problem.

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

#30

Post by throw827474737 »

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...

We will see soon! (:
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