Posted on 12/16/2008 9:34:31 AM PST by PreciousLiberty
WASHINGTON – More than 2 trillion tons of land ice in Greenland, Antarctica and Alaska have melted since 2003, according to new NASA satellite data that show the latest signs of what scientists say is global warming.
More than half of the loss of landlocked ice in the past five years has occurred in Greenland, based on measurements of ice weight by NASA's GRACE satellite, said NASA geophysicist Scott Luthcke. The water melting from Greenland in the past five years would fill up about 11 Chesapeake Bays, he said, and the Greenland melt seems to be accelerating.
NASA scientists planned to present their findings Thursday at the American Geophysical Union conference in San Francisco. Luthcke said Greenland figures for the summer of 2008 aren't complete yet, but this year's ice loss, while still significant, won't be as severe as 2007.
The news was better for Alaska. After a precipitous drop in 2005, land ice increased slightly in 2008 because of large winter snowfalls, Luthcke said. Since 2003, when the NASA satellite started taking measurements, Alaska has lost 400 billion tons of land ice.
In assessing climate change, scientists generally look at several years to determine the overall trend.
Melting of land ice, unlike sea ice, increases sea levels very slightly. In the 1990s, Greenland didn't add to world sea level rise; now that island is adding about half a millimeter of sea level rise a year, NASA ice scientist Jay Zwally said in a telephone interview from the conference.
[snip]
Other research, being presented this week at the geophysical meeting point to more melting concerns from global warming, especially with sea ice.
"It's not getting better; it's continuing to show strong signs of warming and amplification," Zwally said. "There's no reversal taking place."
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Makes me sick. How do these people live with themselves
and if they put the percentage of increase, or a timeline of data, or that they don’t really have a good dataset, people would know they’re nuts...
They’re definitely deliberately misrepresenting the facts, otherwise known as ________ (take your pick)
Here’s your half milimeter of sea rise |
Looks like NASA’s looking for more funding from Obama. It’s very timely too. I scratch your back...
try these dates:
http://igloo.atmos.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/test/print.sh?fm=12&fd=15&fy=1979&sm=12&sd=15&sy=2008
Dec 14, 1979 to Dec 15, 2008
I'll even let them shovel my driveway.
When actual measurements of the ice sheet via satellite radar altimetry are employed, quite a different perspective is obtained. Zwally et al. (2005), for example, found that although "the Greenland ice sheet is thinning at the margins," it is "growing inland with a small overall mass gain." In fact, for the 11-year period 1992-2003, Johannessen et al. (2005) found that "below 1500 meters, the elevation-change rate 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, according to the latter researchers, was a mean increase of 5.4 ± 0.2 cm/year, "or ~60 cm over 11 years, or ~54 cm when corrected for isostatic uplift."
Consequently, and in direct contradiction of the claim of Rignot and Kanagaratnam, Greenland has experienced no "ice sheet mass deficit in the last decade." Quite to the contrary, it has been host to a net accumulation of ice, which Zwally et al. find to be "contributing -0.03 ± 0.01 mm a-1 to sea-level change." As a result, the net accretion of ice on Greenland over the past decade has actually been ever so slightly lowering global sea level.
I melt quite a bit of ice myself. Make mine on the rocks.
http://www.medindia.net/news/Volcano-Deep-Down-Could-Be-Melting-Greenlands-Ice-30702-1.htm
Thinning of the crust (hot magma may the the real reason, but then again NASA doesn’t to USGS work.
I hate the term molten lava or molten magma, it is like liquid water, or solid ice.
Yep, nothing finer than the perfect ice that is hard and cracks when you pour over it, and perfectly clear so you can watch it happen.
Hell, if the ice is like that you could import it and sell it in high-end bars for a good sum.
How the hell do they measure a half millimeter sea level rise? The surface tension (meniscus) on any measuring device would be greater than a half millimeter.
Anyhooo, shows just how miniscule the “problem” really is.
No one has demonstrated that this has anything to do with carbon dioxide, beyond a claim that coincidence is equivalent to causation.
“Chesterfield. A silly millimeter longer, 101”. It is very insignificant, but they have us talking about “it”.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWtls7zgDiQ
I hope my calculations are correct:
2 trillion tons of ice would make a block of ice that is 7.7 miles x 7.7 miles x 7.7 miles.
If I am correct, that ain’t squat!
I just saw this for Chicago:"Snow this evening will taper off as a few snow showers late. Low 21F. ESE winds shifting to WSW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of snow 90%. Snow accumulating 1 to 2 inches."
Ooops.... (from my WeatherUnderground Program)
Snow will likely be at its peak around rush hour... with accumulating snow of 2 to 4 inches making for slow and slippery travel conditions during the evening commute.
An additional inch or two can be expected later this evening before snow ends overnight... bringing total accumulations of 2 to 5 inches across the area.
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