Scientists Cut Greenland Ice Loss Estimate By Half

bonch writes "A new study on Greenland's and West Antarctica's rate of ice loss halves the estimate of ice loss. Published in the journal Nature Geoscience, the study takes into account a rebounding of the Earth's crust called glacial isostatic adjustment, a continuing rise of the crust after being smashed under the weight of the Ice Age. 'We have concluded that the Greenland and West Antarctica ice caps are melting at approximately half the speed originally predicted,' said researcher Bert Vermeeersen."

Comments

Re:Science at work folks

[Vintermann]

It is now a known fact that at least one journal (Climate Research), when publishing papers that the "top dog" climate scientists didn't like, then faced retribution from those same "top dogs" who conspired to then boycott said publication (to not publish in it, or even cite any publications in it) to manipulate its editorial staff.

That says very little unless you also say why they did it. If they suddenly started arguing for UFO abductions in the editorials, for instance, I think we all would agree that wanting to distance yourself from them would be a reasonable thing to do.

You imply, without stating outright, that the paper CR published that climate scientists didn't like was perfectly honest, good science. It was not. The reaction wasn't some secret scheme to manipulate the staff as you suggest, it was a highly public boycott campaign. Contributors were leaving it in droves. Even the climate scientist Hans von Storch, up to that time a darling of the climate denial movement for his bitter feud with Michael Mann, resigned in protest from his position as the board's chief editor because of that paper.

Rain, too

[overshoot]

Snowfall above 3000 meters in greenland is increasing as predicted by climate models. This has nothing to do with the gulf stream (which is not significantly slowing down), it's due to increased water vapour which in turn is due to a positive feedback from global warming. Overall the extra snowfall at high altitudes does not make up for the extra loss at low altitudes, the extra snowfall may even speed up the loss of glaciers by making them top heavy.

And: the increased precipitation, snow and rain, is further diluting the surface salinity in the North Atlantic. When it gets low enough, the Gulf Stream stops its current pattern of flowing north evaporating as it goes until it's salty enough to dive to the bottom and return deep. Much change occurs worldwide, but most immediately Europe gets colder and dryer.

That's going to be very hard to ignore, and IMHO will most likely be the turning point in public and policy-making consciousness of climate change. The question is, when?

Re:Yeah right

[Anonymous Coward]

"But 164 gigatonnes of glacial ice melt per year still sounds like a lot to me" Divide the volume of ice by the area of the oceans... 163e9 gigatons ice*1e6 grams/gigaton / (4 * 3.14 * 6.371e8**2 earth area *.70 sea area/earth area) * 100 years/century = 4.5 cm per century. Also, if this is only the melt rate not counting the snowfall or ice accumulation rate which could cut this by any amount including making it negative (sea level fall), then one could expect the net contribution to sea level rise to be even smaller. Regardless of any other issue related to global warming, the idea that this is "big" in the actual impact scale is simply being stymied by large absolute numbers which is a red herring. The *variability* in tidal fluctuations dwarfs this "correction" by orders of magnitude.

Re:Ololololo

[Coren22]

The problem I have with the people who believe in AGW is that mostly they fall more in the religious category, anyone who tries to present results different then there's or question the methods used is subjected to public ridicule, not listened to. This is religious reasoning, not scientific, listen to the people who disagree and adjust your methods, stop believing that everything you have done is exactly correct and I will listen to you too. There are many flaws in the methodology, from sensors placed within 10 feet of AC exhaust to sensors placed in the middle of a asphalt parking lot, these things skew the results and aren't taken into account.