"One would think that the fact that 99.7% of Greenland’s ice sheet survived the 20th Century might just be more scientifically relevant "
Now why would one think that?
Greenland ice loss 40 trillion pounds bigger than thought
In this photo provided by Michael Bevis, The Ohio State University, the Greenland Global Positioning System (GPS) Network (GNET) in Greenland. Greenland is losing about 40 trillion pounds more ice a year than scientists had thought, … moreGreenland is losing about 40 trillion pounds more ice a year than scientists had thought, according to a new study that used GPS to help estimate how much is melting.
So instead of losing on average 550 trillion pounds of ice each year between 2003 and 2013, Greenland lost about 590 trillion pounds , said co-author Michael Bevis of Ohio State University in a study published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances . That's about a 7.6 percent difference.
The Empire State Building weighs 730 million pounds, so 40 trillion pounds a year is the equivalent to more than 50,000 Empire State Buildings.
"If you look at the last 15 years since we've been having these measurements, it's clearly getting worse, the ice loss," Bevis said. "It is pretty scary."
Overall, though, it is still "a small percentage. I don't think it changes the picture of what's going on," cautioned study co-author Beata Csatho at the University at Buffalo. The extra ice loss adds a tiny amount—one-sixtieth of an inch (0.4 mm) a decade—to global sea level rise, Bevis said. Altogether, Greenland melt adds one fiftieth of an inch—0.54 mm— a decade, he said.
"Not good news certainly as the values are already larger than we'd had wished, but not a dramatic change in the overall already very alarming pattern we've been seeing over the past couple decades," said Duke University climate scientist Drew Shindell, who wasn't part of the study team.
Read more at: phys.org
That may not sound like much, but it’s enough water to submerge the entire U.S. interstate highway system 98 feet deep — and to do so 63 times over,
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2015/12/16/greenland-has-lost-a-staggering-amount-of-ice-and-its-only-getting-worse/?utm_term=.66404156eec0 |
