Greenland Glaciers Melting Much Faster

grqb writes "NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory says that satellite observations indicate that Greenland's glaciers have been dumping ice into the Atlantic Ocean at a rate that's doubled over the past five years. Greenland Ice Sheet's annual loss has risen from 21.6 cubic miles in 1996 to 36 cubic miles in 2005 and it now contributes about 0.5 millimeters out of 3 millimeters to global sea level increases. One theory as to why this is happening is that the meltwater, caused by increasing temperatures in Greenland, serves as a lubricant for the moving ice, hastening its push to the sea. Another study has estimated that the warming rate in Greenland was 2.2 times faster than the global norm -- which is in line with U.N. climate models."

Comments

Sue Greenland!

[TheBogie]

This sounds like Greenland's problem, not ours. We need to start litigation to force Greenland to stop this harmful dumping of ice into the ocean.

NAO

[Anonymous Coward]

But during these past 5 years, the favored phase of the NAO has been negative, which is associated with ridging into Greenland (translating into warmer temperatures there) while Europe and the eastern United States is colder.

I just don't think it's a good idea to make climate extrapolations from five years of data over a small part of the globe. There's plenty of other evidence of global warming without this bullshit.

Re:NAO

[radtea]

There is no doubt we were about the enter another ice age.

This is a religious statement, not a scientific one. There is most certainly doubt as to where the climate is heading. Many global circulation models predict a hotter, drier climate in the next few hundred years. Some ice core data suggests that the interglacial climate is bimodal, with the second mode having an average global temperature 5 C or so warmer than the historical average, and we may be heading into a (possibly human-induced) mode change.

And given that the large (million-year) scale of climate change is extremly poorly understood, there is no reason to believe that the current interglacial is not the end of the ice-age that has dominated Earth's climate for the last million years or so. So there is doubt all round, and the only thing that is certain is that people who have no doubts about the correctness of their own position are contributing nothing but noise to a very complex debate.

Invade them!

[Forrest Kyle]

Let's invade Greenland for insulting our state religion by allowing science to accurately predict events in their country.

There will be plenty of posts talking about...

[tempestdata]

1) The fact that we need to do something now to save the world before its too late!

To them I say.. its useless. Your puny little voices will not be heard. The only way to stop global warming were for the people of the world to collectively reduce their usage of energy and lower their standard of living. Its not happening. It simply is not going to happen.

2) The fact that it cannot be proven that it is human's causing this global warming, and that we know very little about the climate and have been measuring it for a very very short time.

To them I say.. Sure. Fine. But just remember that our great and global civilization wont be the first to have underestimated their effect on nature. History has shown that civilizations CAN affect the environment around them to the point that their civilization becomes unsustainable. Look up the end of the Mayan civilization. Actually even the Easter Islands belong to this category.

Bottom line. I dont think we are hurtling toward the point of no-return.. I believe we are PAST the point of no return.. at this point we might as well just try to find ourselves another planet, or work on technologies that make sure our civilization can survive the future.

Re:There will be plenty of posts talking about...

[killjoe]

'I don't know what sort of science fiction you've been reading, but global warming isn't going to make the Earth uninhabitable, or even remotely so. That sort of thing is nothing more than alarmist bullshit."

I won't make earth uninhabitable bit it will make it more miserable. We can adapt after the population has been culled and after the resource wars have been settled. The balance of power probably won't shift too much, we will probably go ahead and kill lots of people and take over their natural resources and lets face it they can't do jack shit to stop us.

I don't know if Americans will be happier when it's all said and done but for sure many other countries will be either gone or miserable. I suspect even Americans will have a lower standard of living because most of the foods they are used to eating now will simply be unavailable.

Haw! Where's the Skeptical Environmentalist now?

[imrdkl]

Up until just recently, pretty much everyone (even the staunchest environmentalists) thought that the Greenland sheet was quite stable. This does not bode well for the fans of that lovable dane, Bjørn Lomberg, the skeptical environmentalist. As I recall, a good bit of his "evidence" was based on the relative stability, and even mass-increase, of the Greenland sheet - which now seems pretty much debunked by this news. Where's the ice stable now, Mr. Head-in-the-sand? Perhaps Antartica yet bears out your theory? In any case, Denmark lies pretty pretty close to sealevel, as I recall.

Re:woo

[abigor]

Your assertion contradicts the data. Can you give me a reference to back up your claim?

Here is the real data: http://www.geo.unizh.ch/wgms/mbb/mbb8/sum0203.html As you can see, Iceland's glaciers are in a state of retreat.

Global warming / Global dimming

[haeger]

I found this interesting link that talks about something called Global dimming. I've read some about it and it appears as if the global warming is faster now that a lot of countries have reduced their emissions that blocks sunlight, thus making the greenhouse gases even more "effective".
It's a scary read. Some evidence seems to support that global dimming might be the cause of famine in Africa.
There's a lot about the subject on google.

.haeger

Re:Haw! Where's the Skeptical Environmentalist now

[andersa]

No it doesn't. This study only measured iceloss by looking at glacier thickness and velocity around the coast line.

Inland the ice sheet is actually gaining thickness. There is always a different side to the story. The geophysics department at Copenhagen University, where I have studied (astrophysics though) has thoroughly confirmed this.

Reference:
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2005-11/esa -eas110405.php

Greenland Glaciers Growing?

[JonBuck]

Here is an article published last year:

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/111 5356v1

Recent Ice-Sheet Growth in the Interior of Greenland
Ola M. Johannessen, Kirill Khvorostovsky, Martin W. Miles, Leonid P. Bobylev

Abstract:

A continuous data set of Greenland Ice Sheet altimeter height from ERS-1 and ERS-2 satellites, 1992 to 2003, has been analyzed. An increase of 6.4 ± 0.2 centimeters per year is found in the vast interior areas above 1500 meters, in contrast to previous reports of high-elevation balance. Below 1500 meters, the elevation-change rate is -2.0 ± 0.9 cm/year, in qualitative agreement with reported thinning in the ice-sheet margins. The spatially averaged increase is 5.4 ± 0.2 cm/year, or ~60 cm over 11 years, or ~54 cm when corrected for isostatic uplift. Winter elevation changes are shown to be linked to the North Atlantic Oscillation.

Not Good For Low-Lying Islands

[Wellerite]

Islands like Kiribati and Tuvalu in the Pacific ocean have already been experiencing rising sea-levels over a period of 13 years according to a tide-gauge project run by Australia's Bureau of Meteorology.

The rate of about 6mm (0.236 inches) per year is quite slow, but it is significant for low-lying islands like these ones.