[meteorite-list] Global Warming Causing Large Ice Blocks To Fall From The Sky?

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 10:08:33 2004
Message-ID: <200209302025.NAA09066_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://www.itechnology.co.za/index.php?click_id=31&art_id=ct2002092711312843
6I214627&set_id=1

It's raining 200 kg ice blocks!
Reuters
September 27, 2002
 
A Spanish scientist says global warming may be to blame for giant blocks of
ice which fall from clear skies and rip gaping holes in cars and houses.

Jesus Martinez-Frias has spent the last two-and-a-half years investigating
so-called megacryometeors - ice meteors - which tend to weigh more than 10kg
and have been known to leave 1,5 metre-wide holes in houses.

He fears the formation of these hailstone-like blocks on clear days could be
a worrying symptom of climate change.

"I'm not worried that a block of ice might fall on your head, but that great
blocks of ice are forming where they shouldn't exist," said Martinez-Frias,
director of planetary geography at Spain's Astrobiology Centre in Madrid.

"Components of the atmosphere, like ozone and water, are changing in
different levels of the atmosphere. We think these signs could be evidence
of climate change."

He suggests that because global warming involves one level of the atmosphere
getting colder while another gets hotter, some ice clouds now remain longer.

Their centres then fall through the atmosphere, bouncing and gathering mass,
to end up smashing through a car windscreen or, more usually, landing softly
in a field, he suggested.

The first megacryometeor found this year in Spain - by a startled farmer
riding his tractor - weighed 16 kilograms. A 200kg ice meteor has been found
in Brazil, and others in Mexico and Australia. - Reuters
Received on Mon 30 Sep 2002 04:25:58 PM PDT