Talk:Pine Island Bay

Warming

Can I please introduce myself. I am Julian Scott. I work as a glaciologist/geophysicist at the British Antarctic Survey with my main job processing data and writing papers on Pine Island Glacier and its speed up. Therefore I am very up to date on the current science regarding this area. David Vaughan, who discovered the sub glacial volcano, is my boss. I am one of only two people that have driven directly over this volcano by skidoo. There is absolutely no direct link between the very small atmospheric warming in this region of West Antarctica and the speed up of the glacier. I am not trying to hide anything. I generally keep the Pine Island Glacier article up to date but I am now keeping an eye on this page as certain small amounts of info on the glacier going into this page, particularly with regard to warming, have been incorrect. Polargeo (talk) 08:51, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Remove Pine Island Bay

Just having a think about this. There has been nothing added to the article Pine Island Bay that relates specifically to the Bay since the article's creation in 2005. The first paragraph is essentially the USGS description that started the article off. The second paragraph relates to a subglacial volcano which isn't in the Bay at all but is next to Pine Island Glacier and on the other side of the Hudson Mountains. The information in this paragraph is repeated in both the Pine Island Glacier and Hudson Mountains articles where it is more appropriate. The third paragrpah is general glaciology of the Amundesn Sea sector of Antarctica which is repeated in the Thwaites Glacier and Pine Island Glacier articles.

I propose a redirect from Pine Island Bay to the Amundsen Sea and placing a small section on Pine Island Bay into the Amundsen Sea article, to include the USGS description and hopefully ultimately someone will actually put some information on the bay itself there. Maybe one day there will be enough for an article. Polargeo (talk) 08:44, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Hi. I did add a bit of information a few weeks back that the Pine Island and Thwaites glaciers flow into the area, but I see that's not exliciptly about the bay itself. Also, I think you may be mis-summarising the paragraphs: paragraph one is a general overview of the bay and its glaciology, paragraph 2 details the effects of potential subglacial seepage, and paragraph 3 is about the subglacial volcano and the quickening of glacial flow. If you do merge the article with Amundsen Sea, however, please do not delete any of the information in the article that is not mentioned elsewhere, and keep the citations as well. However, the Amundsen Sea article is even shorter than this one! Therefore, some other information on the sea's other features would be appreciated. Also, if you have any information regarding the Amundsen Ice Plain, which stretches over the southern part of the Sea, then please mention that somewhere as well. There has been a lot of scientific discussion over this area in the past few years: some recently about the subglacial volcano, but slightly older discussion as well proposing the area as a specificly vulnerable region to the effects of global warming. The area has been measured as one of the fastest-warming regions in Antarctica even before the discovery of the volcano, and changes like this were generally attributed, directly or indirectly, to the effects of global warming. A recent map of warming over the past 50 years places much of West Antarctica under a pronounced warming trend. Merging the article with Amundsen Sea might pretty much double the article length. The article may then no longer be considered a stub, but a section in the article on the Pine Island Bay alone may be needed, unless a bulk of the information is already mentioned in other articles that will be linked from the main article. Therefore, it may be a good idea for some more information, such as glaciology/sea ice and other distinct features of the Sea to be included. Thanks. ~AH1^(TCU) 22:36, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for that. Yes Pine Island Bay is essentially a very small part of the Amundsen Sea and it is wrong that the Amundsen Sea article should not have this information in it itself as Thwaites Glacier does not flow into Pine Island Bay the information here would be more appropriate in the Amundsen Sea article. I agree, my aim would be to take the Amundsen Sea article beyond stub status and I would make sure all of the relevent information from this article was moved there. I actually have some interesting things I can add specifically about the bay but I would prefer to do the tidy up first. Polargeo (talk) 08:00, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Done. You will note that I moved all information from this article to the Amundsen Sea article and have not tried to modify. Most of the information has gone into the general Amundsen Sea article and not the new Pine Island Bay section. The only info into the Pine Island Bay section was the first paragraph from this article (the only bit refering specifically to the bay. Hope this works well. Polargeo (talk) 09:24, 24 April 2009 (UTC)