Greenland's Ice Melting Faster Than Expected

[Turborama]

Run time: 02:36 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lf2iGpeeg88   Posted on YouTube: September 28, 2009 By YouTube Member: Views on YouTube: 0   Posted on DU: October 03, 2009 By DU Member: Turborama Views on DU: 324

 
Greenland's ice sheet has more than doubled its contribution to sea level increases in the last seven years.

Glaciers are thinning at a dangerous rate and melting ice is pouring into the sea far faster than previously realised.

The environmental group Greenpeace has sent independent scientists on an expedition to Greenland to investigate the reasons behind the rapid loss of ice.

They found warm subtropical waters in the fjords and glaciers moving towards the sea at the alarming speed of up to 38 metres a day.

Al Jazeera English's Tim Friend reports.

Witnessing the melt (VIDEO)
NBC’s chief environmental correspondent Anne Thompson reports on the thinning ice near Kangerlussaq, Greenland.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032619/vp/32942362#32942362

Study: ‘Runaway’ melt on Antarctica, Greenland - Experts find more ‘pervasive, enduring’ thinning than previously realized

msnbc.com staff and news service reports

The most detailed satellite information available shows that ice sheets in Greenland and western Antarctica are shrinking faster than scientists thought and in some places are already in runaway melt mode, a new study found.

"Dynamic thinning of Greenland and Antarctic ice-sheet ocean margins is more sensitive, pervasive, enduring and important than previously realized," researchers wrote in the paper published online Wednesday in the peer-reviewed journal Nature.

Using 50 million laser readings from a NASA satellite, scientists for the first time calculated changes in the height of the vulnerable but massive ice sheets and found them especially worse at their edges. That's where warmer water eats away from below. In some parts of Antarctica, ice sheets have been losing 30 feet a year in thickness since 2003, according to the study.

Some of those areas are about a mile thick, so they've still got plenty of ice to burn through. But the drop in thickness is speeding up. In parts of Antarctica, the yearly rate of thinning from 2003 to 2007 is 50 percent higher than it was from 1995 to 2003.

These new measurements confirm what some of the more pessimistic scientists thought: The melting along the crucial edges of the two major ice sheets is accelerating and is in a self-feeding loop. The more the ice melts, the more water surrounds and eats away at the remaining ice.

'Runaway effect' in places
"To some extent it's a runaway effect. The question is how far will it run?" said lead author Hamish Pritchard of the British Antarctic Survey. "It's more widespread than we previously thought."

More: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32985250/ns/us_news-environment/


Glaciers like this one on Antarctica are spread around the coastlines
of that continent as well as Greenland. A new study found runaway melt
at many of those coastal glaciers.


Hamish Pritchard / British Antarctic Survey
Satellite readings allowed experts to measure surface height
change over the ice sheets in Antarctica (right) and Greenland
(left) from 2003 to 2008. Red shows lower levels, blue higher.
Rapid lowering is concentrated on the ice streams and glaciers
that drain West Antarctica and Greenland.

[Systematic Chaos]

1. What about those fucking Olympics, eh?

:eyes:

[Turborama]

2. Good question

Interestingly, The Guardian has a good piece on this...

Obama's Olympic trip to Copenhagen knocks climate talks off the podium

Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent Friday 2 October 2009

After his part in Chicago's bid for the Olympics, the US president must keep his eye on the ultimate prize: the UN's climate talks

Some things are just worth fighting for — like the chance to host an Olympics. And some apparently are not — like assuring the fate of the entire planet.

Michelle Obama says the president was ready to "drop everything" and make a big "sacrifice" to be in Copenhagen today for a "take no prisoners" campaign for Chicago's Olympic bid. Not that any further proof was needed that this was a really important moment, but just in case: Oprah Winfrey, a fellow Chicagoan, also made the trip to Copenhagen with the Obamas.

Now environmentalists are demanding Obama make a return visit to Copenhagen in two months to carry the fight for a global warming deal.

A contingent of activists were outside the White House on Thursday, carrying an Olympic logo with the message: "Climate change is not a game." Obama got a similar message in Copenhagen today from Greenpeace which turned up at his meeting with the Danish PM with a banner reading: "Right city, wrong date."

It's a fair point. Obama was elected as a change candidate after all, and he made energy reform central to that change. Officially, climate change remains at the top of the White House to-do list — but there is increasing frustration at home and abroad about how far Obama will go to fight for it.

More: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2009/oct/02/obama-olympics-climate-change

And in the NYT, posted in LBN: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x4088635">Obama Aide Concedes Climate Law Must Wait