We just discussed this paper in journal club last week. It's a lot easier to understand these ideas in conversation than in reading a paper.
When a seafloor ice sheet retreats beyond certain undersea features, it is unstable until it reaches another configuration. This retreat can be relatively rapid. For the near future, understanding the hysteresis is sort of secondary. The point is that a mechanism for rapid retreat is identified. An animation of a related simulation was shown; the abrupt retreat of a large piece of the Antarctic during the last glacial retreat was striking. I'm still having trouble getting the ice people to be specific about time scales, though. mt On 7/30/07, Hank Roberts <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > It's a pity the word "hysteretic" is so superficially similar to > "hysteric" > > http://www.agu.org/journals/jf/jf0703/2006JF000664/ > > "... Our principal results are that (1) marine ice sheets do not > exhibit neutral equilibrium but have well-defined, discrete > equilibrium profiles; (2) steady grounding lines cannot be stable on > reverse bed slopes; and (3) marine ice sheets with overdeepened beds > can undergo hysteresis under variations in sea level, accumulation > rate, basal slipperiness, and ice viscosity. This hysteretic behavior > can in principle explain the retreat of the West Antarctic ice sheet > following the Last Glacial Maximum and may play a role in the dynamics > of Heinrich events." > > > > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Global Change ("globalchange") newsgroup. Global Change is a public, moderated venue for discussion of science, technology, economics and policy dimensions of global environmental change. Posts will be admitted to the list if and only if any moderator finds the submission to be constructive and/or interesting, on topic, and not gratuitously rude. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/globalchange -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
