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Wednesday, July 20th, 2016

Greenland Just Lost a Trillion Tons of Ice and Nobody Noticed

Author:     Maddie Stone
Source:     Gizmodo
Publication Date:     20 July 2016 (used)
 Link: Greenland Just Lost a Trillion Tons of Ice and Nobody Noticed
Stephan:   Well we now have confirmation. Four hundred American coastal cities and large parts of several states -- Florida, Louisiana, Virginia, North Carolina -- will be submerged in whole or part by the time your grandchildren are your age. The same will hold true for other nations with coast lines. And some nations, such as Bangladesh may simply diasppear. While localities are beginning to wake up to what is coming, I have serious doubts that the Federal government will do much because the Republican Party will block any attempt at serious coordinated climate remediation. In any case it is all going to be too little too late. By the end of this century a map of the U.S. and maps of the other countries of the world that have coastal regions are going to look radically different than they do today.
The ESA’s Cryo-Sat satellite, hovering over our rapidly disappearing ice sheets. Credit: ESA

The ESA’s Cryo-Sat satellite, hovering over our rapidly disappearing ice sheets.
Credit: ESA

Between 2011 and 2014, while humans were discovering dubstep and the wonder of selfies, Greenland was melting fast. It lost a trillion tons of ice in just three years, and the world neither noticed nor gave a damn.

That’s according to a new, open-access study published in Geophysical Research Letters, which used the European Space Agency’s CryoSat satellite, along with regional ice models, to show that recent melting of the Greenland ice sheet contributed twice as much to sea level rise (roughly 2.5 millimeters over the study period) as the prior two decades. In other words, Greenland—which has been visibly losing ice since the ‘90s—is melting at an accelerating rate.

This falls right in line with the picture Earth scientists have built by studying past ice sheet contractions. Namely, when ice starts melting, it doesn’t go in a plodding, linear fashion. It disintegrates quickly, resulting in large pulses of […]

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1 Comment

  1. Fred Orestuk on Wednesday, July 20, 2016 at 3:58 am

    At any one time of day there are hundreds of Trans Atlantic airline flights in the air flying a route south of Greenland. These planes are burning 3000 gallons of fuel an hour with an exhaust temperature of approximately 2000 degrees. Average altitude is approximately 30,000 feet. The trade winds are streaming up the Atlantic Ocean directly into Greenland carrying in the heated air. What do you think is going to happen.