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Greenland's Fastest Glacier Sets New Speed Record
vinces99 writes "The latest observations of Jakobshavn Glacier show that Greenland's largest glacier is moving ice from land into the ocean at a speed that appears to be the fastest ever recorded. Researchers from the University of Washington and the German Space Agency measured the speed of the glacier in 2012 and 2013. The results were published Feb. 3 in The Cryosphere, an open access journal of the European Geosciences Union. Jakobshavn Glacier, which is widely believed to be the glacier that produced the large iceberg that sank the Titanic in 1912, drains the Greenland ice sheet into a deep-ocean fjord on the west coast of the island. This speedup of Jakobshavn means that the glacier is adding more and more ice to the ocean, contributing to sea-level rise. 'We are now seeing summer speeds more than four times what they were in the 1990s, on a glacier which at that time was believed to be one of the fastest, if not the fastest, glacier in Greenland,' said lead author Ian Joughin, a glaciologist at the UW's Polar Science Center. The new observations show that in summer of 2012 the glacier reached a record speed of more than 10 miles (17 km) per year, or more than 150 feet (46 m) per day. These appear to be the fastest flow rates recorded for any glacier or ice stream in Greenland or Antarctica, researchers said."
the glacier will break Mach 1 by 2016 when Hillary is president and Al Gore is secretary of state.
Greenland has experienced (like Antarctica) some very heavy snowfalls in the past few years, which increases the thickness of the glaciers. Glacial flow is fairly well understood, as the glacier gets thicker it causes faster movement.
The calving of large glaciers is often touted by alarmists as proof of their claims, but this phenomenon does not actually support the alarmist position at all.
Does this mean that in a few years they will have to re-define the term "at glacial pace"? :)
If anyone thinks you're working at a glacial speed, you are now 4x as fast as you were in the 1990's. Now THAT is progress!
You know I don't really care about the number of humans the impeding environmental crisis will kill off, the more the better, as long as its not me of course, and it will take at least 50 years, by which time I will be dragged to my grave by my fat ass. In all probability it will be some brown nobody that cooks his food over a dung fire in Asstonia, and who gives a fuck about that ? What concerns me more is the sterile wasteland the survivors will create. I mean its nice to "conserve" some splatter of greenery somewhere out of town siting in front of your TV in your underpants, drinking craft beer, but I'll wager not much will stop you bulldozing that shit down to feed your starving kids.
I'm still a bit confused on those speeds. Can someone convert them to coincide with the viscosity of tar pitch or the rate by which bills get passed through congress?
Wrong question. The question is how far sea level is going to rise over your lifetime due to a multitude of causes. Then when you know that, the question is how much you will have to pay (in taxes, prices, and risk) to deal with the consequences.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
For over a decade the Slashdot poster has brought ignorance, libel, and the most inestimable repetitive motion, face-palming injuries to have afflicted the general public. With Medea-like intensity, this mass trauma began rising sharply four years ago, reflecting new and unexpected ravages by the keyboards of tens of thousands of monkeys and/or basement dwellers. A 2009 Department of Commerce report projected that 51,000 persons would be rendered eternally speechless by Slashdot posting atrocities in 2025. That figure will probably be reached in 2015, a decade ahead of schedule.
The more the sea level rises, the closer my house gets to beachfront property.
"Wrong question. The question is how far sea level is going to rise over your lifetime due to a multitude of causes.
According to the IPCC, perhaps as much as a meter over the next hundred years.
Then when you know that, the question is how much you will have to pay (in taxes, prices, and risk) to deal with the consequences."
Well, if that seems fast to you, you can always packing now.
As for taxes, it better not cost me very damned much, because I wasn't one of those people who decided to build (or live in) a big city at sea level. Nobody twisted their arms and made them live there. Let them pay to relocate.
In the case of New Orleans, the corrupt politicians and Army officials (Corp of Engineers) who took everybody's money instead of keeping the dikes in shape should be the ones paying the cost, not the taxpayers.
On the other hand, personally I think continuing to build a big city on the coast, below sea level, for 100 years or more with inadequate dikes should really be the top candidate for The Darwin Award of the Century.
Actually I feel the same way about San Francisco. Once every century or so they enjoy a magnitude 9 earthquake. Obviously not the best place to build a densely populated city. Yet after the last magnitude 9 quake, the city leaders and rich elites deliberately downplayed the damage and death toll because they wanted people to come back to the city. They were protecting their wealth, which were tied to the S.F. real estate values.
It's not so simple as "10 cm/decade doesn't seem like much".
Imagine storm surges laid out on a bell curve, with height above mean high tide as the X axis. When you chose how close to build to the waterline, and the protections you put in, you probably wouldn't draw the line where you'd get one flood every thousand years. You might decide you can live with one flood every ten years. But shift the mean high tide by 20 cm over two decades, and that once a decade flood might happen eight or ten times a decade.
There's often a sharp line between a near miss and a disaster. A one foot rise over thirty years (roughly correponds to 1m/century) means that a seawall or levee that would have held back the flood get overtopped. A one foot rise means a place that never got flooded before could be in harms way. Some of the levees that failed in Katrina were overtopped by only a matter of inches. Others were overtopped by ten feet, but that's a different issue.
And in a lot of the world, the floodplain isn't chosen because it's a nice place to live. Bengladeshi subsistence farmers don't locate in low areas because of the beaches, but because that's the only land they can afford. These are people with very low levels of material consumption. They don't get much of the share of benefit from the carbon added to the atmosphere, but they bear a disproportionate share of the costs.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
"A one foot rise over thirty years (roughly correponds to 1m/century) means that a seawall or levee that would have held back the flood get overtopped."
Sure. But it also means that you have 100 years to make your levee higher, or to move farther up the hill. We aren't talking about sudden changes here.
Correction: 100 years for a meter, of course. You have less time for smaller rises, but then smaller rises are also relatively less of a problem.
Where I live, any construction in a 100-year flood zone has to meet special criteria, and even then might not be approved by the city or county.
The answer: sea levels have risen (on average) by a millimeter per year since the end of the Little Ice Age. Of course, during the Little Ice Age, sea levels FELL. Sometimes sea level rise appears to accelerate and sometimes decelerate to almost nothing.
Tubby or not tubby. Fat is the question
Slow news day ./?
as long as your house is water tight you should be okay when the sea has eroded all the soil around it and it can turn your house into a houseboat and you can travel the world.. :o)
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
Speaking as someone who once lost his house due to frequent, relatively new, unexpected, and profound flooding*:
If a community is depending on a seawall or levee for survival against the ingress of water: It was known to be doomed for some time already -- otherwise, the seawall or levee would not have been constructed to begin with. (These things are expensive to build, even in WPA times.)
Time and time again, from Katrina to the Mississippi floods to Sandy to Fukashima, we see the dire effects of building in places that can (and will) flood.
Given our data and our advanced understanding of topography, we already know that they will flood. That we continue to build things and house people in these places is a fault of builders/realtors/bankers/investors/governance/ignorance, not of inadequate band-aids that are mere inches or feet from certain and sudden disaster..
And since we know this, it's cheaper to move the city before the flood, than to attempt to recover/remediate/relocate/mitigate after the flood.
(*: It hadn't flooded there in any meaningful way for 20 years. And it hadn't catastrophically flooded for 80 years before that. Safe bet? Sure seemed like it, but it wasn't. And it is it not a safe bet for anyone else depending on man-made geological improvements to keep them safe from water.)
Kid-proof tablet..
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0, 42, pi, e, c, pi, 6*10^23
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In the case of basal sliding, the entire glacier slides over its bed. This type of motion is enhanced if the bed is soft sediment, if the glacier bed is thawed and if meltwater is prevalent.
It's the FASTER melting that causing the increase of speed.
You do understand this is about increased melting, right?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
My house is about 1,000 feet above sea level, and if all the ice in the world melted, it is estimated that the sea level would rise by 216 feet. So I would still be well out of danger. Ironically, only a few hundred million years ago, my house would have been at the bottom of a shallow sea. Apparently there used to be more water than there is now.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
what about the other 70m that the sea is going to rise because of the melting of the ice ?
The scientific consensus seems to be that it will take us 5,000 years to melt it all, so I am guessing that people will move out little by little.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
And in a lot of the world, the floodplain isn't chosen because it's a nice place to live. Bengladeshi subsistence farmers don't locate in low areas because of the beaches, but because that's the only land they can afford.
Also, because flood plain land is the most fertile.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
wrong. Maybe you should read the report?
Best case 220 mm, worse case 500mm
Where the hell are you getting 1 meter from?
Just so you know, event happening have been closer to worse case then best case, in general.
And do you really think it won't effect you much just becasue you don't live in a city below sea level(of which there will be any more in the next 85 years.
All those people will move, to where you are at. Infrastructure rices will increase faster then tax base growth.
That is why we, society, should be spending money now. Because it will be cheaper and spread out of a longer period.
Or we wait until it's critical and deal the the much., much more expensive situation.
You don't live on an island. You, one way or another, use port cities.
" for 100 years or more with inadequate dikes "
I agree. Sadly dykes aren't free.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
The glacier is moving a record speeds. This is due to massive accumulation of ice putting pressure on the glacier. Ice....wait.....
I thought ice was only growing in the Antarctic region, NOT the Arctic. But now you tell me it is increasing there too.
(And darn, if it ain't increasing on my home as well.)
"wrong. Maybe you should read the report? Best case 220 mm, worse case 500mm"
Depends on which report you mean. In the IPCC Assessment Reports (plural) the realistic-worst-case I have seen was about a meter. As I recall, in the latest report they toned that down some, but as I said, I was talking about the worst case that I remember they reported.
"Just so you know, event happening have been closer to worse case then best case, in general."
Depends on who you talk to. Of 117 AGW models studies, many of which were referenced when compiling the latest AR report, the MEAN difference between the models' projections and actual observations was over 100%. I would say that only 50%, on average, of the projected warming can hardly be called "closer to worst case".
"And do you really think it won't effect you much just becasue you don't live in a city below sea level("
That isn't what I said.
"All those people will move, to where you are at. Infrastructure rices will increase faster then tax base growth."
As I said: let them pay for the costs of relocating. It simply isn't my responsibility, in any legal, moral or ethical sense of the word.
"That is why we, society, should be spending money now."
To relocate people? You go ahead and spend all the money you want. I'll keep mine, thanks.
"Or we wait until it's critical and deal the the much., much more expensive situation."
Yep. If they wait until the last minute, it will cost them a lot more. I don't dispute that.
"You, one way or another, use port cities."
Yep. And one way or another, I pay for the part I use. But I don't have any reason to pay for the part I don't.
He had the right answer, but most of his proofs had been disproven by contemporary scientistis. He was too egotistical to accept their theories (which history later proved correct), and thus was an unabashed ass in many ways. Who felt that he was beyond the need for the peer review / publication process of his day.
Who's computer models have yet to predict anywhere close to accurately.
Creating a model that predicts the past is easy. Creating one that predicts the future....that's scientific.
Land rises and falls for the same reasons that continents drift, altitude of any particular spot will change over time. There probably wasn't much more water then, just the magma beneath your continental plate let it sink deeper. Or perhaps your plate has collided with others in the last few hundred million years and buckling has raised the middle.
That's just incredibly cool to contemplate.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
Ironically, only a few hundred million years ago, my house would have been at the bottom of a shallow sea. Apparently there used to be more water than there is now.
You're assuming your elevation and/or geography is the same as it was millions of years ago. I live near the Great Lakes which are inland freshwater seas, roughly 500-600 feet above sea level. Lake Erie is actually quite shallow, particularly on the western third. Just because it was a shallow sea doesn't mean it was part of the world ocean necessarily.
nah, I'm good. My house is around 100m above sea level
Just the opposite for inland Florida. Much of the swampland people bought cheap thirty years ago is high and dry. Neighborhoods flood because houses are built low on a slab instead of the traditional 24 in pilings. My cousins, brother, and I spent many hot summer days in the 1950s playing in the cool sand under our grandfathers house.
Just as for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, for every anecdote there is an equal and opposite anecdote. See also: Quantum entanglement.
That said, it's a lovely story that you have. But what are you adding?
Kid-proof tablet..