[HN Gopher] South Pole Topography
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       South Pole Topography
        
       Author : afrcnc
       Score  : 126 points
       Date   : 2023-02-05 14:31 UTC (8 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (brr.fyi)
 (TXT) w3m dump (brr.fyi)
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | cozzyd wrote:
       | The drifting at south pole is rather benign compared to places
       | like Summit Station Greenland. My experiments in Greenland get
       | buried twice as fast as the ones at Pole :)
        
       | metadat wrote:
       | How about a building which rests on screw-like pillars which sit
       | in a motorized shaft, with the pillar extending from the
       | structure down into the ground.
       | 
       | The tops of the pillars would be accessible from inside the
       | building.
       | 
       | When you want the building "height" to increase, you install
       | another notch to each pillar and set the system to climb it's way
       | up (or even down) a notch.
       | 
       | Such a structure would be "drift" proof.
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       | 
       | Is this the concept alluded to but not addressed directly in TFA?
       | A quick web search didn't turn up any information for me.
        
         | ttepasse wrote:
         | The 3rd south pole station is designed for hydraulically
         | jacking up those pillars and installing height:
         | 
         | https://www.southpolestation.com/foundationdesign.html
         | 
         | https://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/livingsouthpole/new...
         | 
         | It's the current trend for antarctic architecture, also seen in
         | the German Von Neumayer III and the British Halley VI stations.
         | 
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neumayer-Station_III
         | 
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halley_Research_Station
        
           | [deleted]
        
       | Amorymeltzer wrote:
       | Discussion from last week, four comments:
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34549893
        
         | dang wrote:
         | Thanks! I've merged those comments hither (and relativized
         | their timestamps to the current submission).
        
           | ttepasse wrote:
           | As the poster of one of those comments I was rather irritated
           | by the adjusted datestamp and doubted my own memory. Has
           | there ever been discussion for the HN software to enable more
           | metadata for moved comments, like "10 days (older thread)" or
           | such?
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | consumer451 wrote:
       | I've been enjoying this blog. I just ran across a link to the
       | McMurdo webcams. It looks lovely today.
       | 
       | https://www.usap.gov/videoclipsandmaps/mcmwebcam.cfm
        
       | navanchauhan wrote:
       | I read the entire article and was waiting for them to talk about
       | fonts before I realised it's about Topography, and not Typography
        
       | njitram wrote:
       | What I wonder, after reading this, is what happens with all that
       | snow that is accumulating and causing all the buildings to be
       | burried? Is the South Pole slowly rising? Or is snow at the
       | bottom somehow dissipating?
        
         | LargoLasskhyfv wrote:
         | It slowly turns to ice, compressed by its own weight.
         | 
         | Thereby enabling us to get
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_core and analyse the layers
         | like tree rings, err...
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dendrochronology
        
         | fpoling wrote:
         | It accumulates on top, turns into ice, but the bottom layers of
         | the ice very gradually flow (tenth of thousandth of years)
         | toward the see. Modeling that precisely is hard and we do not
         | know if Antarctic as the whole gains ice or looses it.
        
           | jcranmer wrote:
           | My current understanding of the numbers is that the East
           | Antarctic Ice Sheet (which includes the South Pole) is in
           | positive ice mass balance, while the West Antarctic Ice Sheet
           | is losing ice mass and is in or near a complete collapse
           | scenario. It seems that the eastern sheet isn't gaining
           | enough mass to offset the loss of the western sheet, but
           | every study seems to contradict the previous study so...
           | :shrug:
        
           | olddustytrail wrote:
           | That depends who you mean by "we", but for people who follow
           | this stuff the GRACE measurements are pretty clear.
        
         | jcranmer wrote:
         | In short: they become glaciers. The snow gets compacted into
         | ice, which then slowly moves as a glacier (motion is highest at
         | the base, I think) until it eventually reaches the glacial
         | margin.
        
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       (page generated 2023-02-05 23:00 UTC)