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To: aruanan
Both ice sheets are gaining in mass.

Greenland and West Antartica are losing mass, while East Antartica is gaining mass, according to the article.

Which two ice sheets do you think are gaining mass? Source?

45 posted on 04/15/2008 8:20:43 PM PDT by secretagent ((editorial question))
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To: secretagent
Which two ice sheets do you think are gaining mass? Source?

Greenland is losing ice around the edge, but that's always going on, inevitably. However, in the interior, Greenland is gaining ice at a rate faster than the loss around the edges, so much so, it has been calculated that the sea level has actually been decreased recently by something a millimeter. Anyway, as a whole, Antarctica is also gaining ice mass regardless of West Antarctica. I'll look for the source and post it.
46 posted on 04/15/2008 8:35:42 PM PDT by aruanan
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To: secretagent
Which two ice sheets do you think are gaining mass? Source?

Greenland is losing ice around the edge, but that's always going on, inevitably. However, in the interior, Greenland is gaining ice at a rate faster than the loss around the edges, so much so, it has been calculated that the sea level has actually been decreased recently by something a millimeter. Anyway, as a whole, Antarctica is also gaining ice mass regardless of West Antarctica. I'll look for the source and post it.

Sorry, that was about 1/10mm/year.

In Greenland, the ice loss at lower altitudes is "-2.0 ± 0.9 cm/year, in qualitative agreement with reported thinning in the ice-sheet margins," but that "an increase of 6.4 ± 0.2 cm/year is found in the vast interior areas above 1500 meters." Spatially averaged over the bulk of the ice sheet, the net result is a mean increase of 5.4 ± 0.2 cm/year, "or ~60 cm over 11 years, or ~54 cm when corrected for isostatic uplift.""
48 posted on 04/15/2008 8:51:03 PM PDT by aruanan
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