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Just Wondering

Doug Miller wrote:
In article .com, wrote:

I've also found a lot of information indicating net losses of ice
in the Arctic, and a net loss in the world's glaciers, but
information
on the former is not easily converted to net mass so I'm still not
clear on the recent net change, if any, in the global ice inventory.

It's worth noting that, whatever the effects of loss of ice in the north polar
cap may be, rising sea level is *not* among them: the north polar cap is
floating, and melting all of it won't affect sea level.

The south polar cap is an entirely different story. Some Antarctic ice is
floating; some of it is on land, above sea level; and some of it is on land
*below* sea level -- that is, it's in the ocean and resting on the ocean
floor. Melting of ice in this last category will cause sea level to *drop*.

Whether sea levels will rise or fall in response to melting polar ice caps
depends on the relative proportion of submarine Antarctic ice to land-based
ice in Antartica and Greenland.

I've not been able to find data indicating what that proportion is.

So the only ice that, if melted, would raise the sea level is ice
resting on land masses. When one subtracts out ice on or in the ocean,
how much ice is left, and where is it? Also, that's the air temperature
over the land-based ice? Because if the temperature is 20 degrees F,
and global warming raised the temperature to 22, or even 25 degrees F,
it still isn't going to melt.