Drones Over Greenland Give Insight To Pollution's Effects On Melting

merbs writes Thank glaciologist Jason Box for the Arctic bird's-eye view of one of the most serene, alien landscapes on the planet. Box spends much of his time in Greenland, where he uses drones to measure 'dark snow'—snow that has accumulated soot and dust, thanks to human activity—which absorbs more sunlight and melts faster. Drone photography, then, may hold the key to understanding just how fast Greenland is melting.

Comments

Re:Cult of the Church of Climatology

[K. S. Kyosuke]

And you conveniently forgot to mention that at current solar output and with current geography, we are in one of the coldest periods in the planet's history.

Surely you don't mean it would beat the Proterozoic glaciations? Unfortunately, our species didn't develop during those really hot periods, and I'm not sure I'm adventurous enough to wish for seven billion people to find out how we'd cope with that, even just biologically, much less economically.

Even if we could get CO2 concentrations up to 2000 ppm, we likely wouldn't be warming the planet to anywhere near where it used to be

That may not be necessary, even halfway towards how hot it used to be would be bad enough. No need to have polar temperatures of twenty degrees again - mostly because there'd only be one pole for people to live on, and most of the natural resources we need is still around the equator where few people would venture. (I wonder if there'd still be katabatic winds in Antarctica. That could get really interesting with higher energy levels in the system...)