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To: secretagent
I can live with that but the article on the study I linked you to states this:

"The spatially averaged increase is 5.4 cm per year over the study area, when corrected for post-Ice Age uplift of the bedrock beneath the ice sheet. These results are remarkable because they are in contrast to previous scientific findings of balance in Greenland's high-elevation ice."

A net increase in mass.

108 posted on 12/12/2006 5:56:43 PM PST by jwalsh07
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To: jwalsh07
I saw that too. A gain above 1500 meters and a loss below 1500 meters, as far as the altimeters can see. The gains and losses average to a 5.4cm/yr gain. But note the marginal areas (more at the perimeter, where the greatest loss rates occur?) :

The trend below 1500 metres however does not include the steeply-sloping marginal areas where current altimeter data are unusable.

This might mean that the loss of 2cm/yr in the below 1500 meters areas the satellite can measure, along with the marginal areas, roughly balances the 6.0cm/yr gain in the interior (above 1500 meters).

Hence the article's "no consensus" and "need for further data". Or in the words of the study's author:

"There is clearly a need for continued monitoring using new satellite altimeters and other observations, together with numerical models to calculate the Greenland Ice Sheet mass budget," Johannessen added.

110 posted on 12/12/2006 6:53:09 PM PST by secretagent
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