World's Glaciers Have New Size Estimate (new method used to calculate ice thickness)

Yahoo! News ^ | 10/23/12 | Becky Oskin, OurAmazingPlanet - LiveScience.com

[NormsRevenge]

The relatively small glaciers that drape the planet's mountains will play an important role in future sea level rise, according to a new study that estimated glaciers' collective size.

Researchers calculated the ice thickness for 171,000 glaciers worldwide, excluding the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, which hold the bulk of Earth's frozen water. Through a combination of direct satellite observations and modeling, they determined the total volume of ice tied up in the glaciers is nearly 41,000 cubic miles (170,000 cubic kilometers), plus or minus 5,000 cubic miles (21,000 cubic km).

If all the glaciers were to melt, global sea levels would rise almost 17 inches (43 centimeters), the scientists found.

Improved estimate

The study, published in the Oct. 11 issue of the Journal of Geophysical Research, is an improvement on previous estimates of the global ice volume because it uses a physical approach, said lead study author Matthias Huss, a glaciologist at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland.

The glacier count comes from the recently released Randolph Glacier Inventory and global topography from NASA satellite data.

"To date, the volume of glaciers was only estimated using very simple empirical equations with high uncertainties," Huss told OurAmazingPlanet in an email interview. "Our new method not only provides an estimate of the ice volume, but allows calculating local ice thickness on a fine grid for each of the 200,000 glaciers worldwide," he said.

[irishtenor]

Almost 17 inches???????
We’re DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMED!!!

[Ron C.]

Aww Gee whiz - only raise sea level by 1 foot 5 inches??!!

And what would it take to melt them all? It's pretty damn cold in Antarctica - what's going to get it hot enough to melt?

I estimate that all the BS spewed by liberal scientists, media, and colleges around the world are gonna raise the sea level by that much long before ANY glaciers melt.

[JeanLM]

99% of the ice is in just two places, Greenland and Antartica. The rest don’t count for much sea level rise at all.

It’ll take a lot of BTUs to melt the ice in Antartica.

[ConservativeInPA]

Darn, I own oceanside property, not oceanfront. I bought it counting on increasing sea levels so that I will have oceanfront property in a few years.

[onedoug]

When the worldwide hurricane seasons change I’ll start changing my climatological mind.