Greenland warming speeds rise in sea level

telegraph.uk ^ | 17/02/2006 | Nic Fleming

[quantim]

Sea levels are rising quicker than previously thought because the amount of water Greenland's glaciers are dumping into the Atlantic Ocean has almost doubled in five years, according to research to be published today.

Scientists who carried out the first comprehensive analysis of changing speeds of the glaciers on the world's largest island were shocked to discover that many have doubled in speed within the past decade.

Warmer temperatures are "lubricating" the glaciers and have driven a 150 per cent increase in the amount of ice they are delivering to the ocean between 1996 and last year. The latitude at which this is happening is moving north.

The researchers fear that as a result current estimates that sea levels will rise by up to 90cms during the 21st century could underestimate the problem.

While there have been previous isolated reports of particular glaciers speeding up, the research presented yesterday at the American Association for the Advancement of Science conference in St Louis is the first detailed study showing the effect is widespread across Greenland.

Eric Rignot, of Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, the leading author of the study, said: "Climate change can work in different ways, but generally speaking, if you warm up the ice sheet, the glacier will flow faster.

"The southern half of Greenland is reacting to what we think is climate warming. The northern half is waiting but I don't think it is going to take long. If more glaciers accelerate farther north, especially along the west coast, the mass loss from Greenland will continue to increase well above predictions."

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has estimated that global sea levels will increase by 10-90cms over the next century. Last century they rose by 10-20cm. Previously models of the melting of the Greenland ice sheet have been based mainly on airborne laser altimetry and have suggested that while the interior is reasonably stable, the periphery was thinning, especially in areas where glaciers meet the sea.

Dr Rignot and colleagues set out to obtain accurate measurements to help to build a clearer picture of Greenland's current and future contribution to rising sea levels. They collected satellite data on the speeds of 27 glaciers and made estimates for two others.

The velocities of several large glaciers had doubled in recent years to 12km per year, making them among the fastest flowing in the world.

The scientists found that warmer air temperatures have increased the overall shrinkage of the Greenland ice sheet from 91 cubic km per year in 1996 to 138 cubic km per year in 2000 and to 224 cubic km per year in 2005.

About two-thirds of this was caused by the dumping of ice in the Atlantic by glaciers and so the ice loss attributable to glacier flow grew by 150 per cent from 60 cubic km a decade ago to 150 cubic km last year.

On this basis Dr Rignot, whose work is published in Science, concluded that Greenland's contribution to rising global sea levels increased from around 0.23mm per year in 1996 to around 0.57mm per year in 2005.

The Greenland ice sheet is 1.7 million sq km - a little smaller than Mexico - and three kilometres thick. If it melted completely sea levels would rise by seven metres

[Jeff Chandler]

Here a start:

Antarctic researchers have to build stations on skiis because the stations get buried under the 5 feet more snow a year: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4693409.stm

19 May 2005 - According to a new study published in the online edition of Science, the East Antarctic Ice Sheet gained about 45 billion tons of ice between 1992 and 2003. The ice sheets are several kilometers thick in places, and contain about 90% of the world's ice.

Here's an article which tells about the increasing ice in Antarctica that then goes on to blame global warming for the increased ice. The excuse is that greater moisture from global warming in the other 10% of the world's ice is causing an increase in the 90% of the world's ice in Antarctica! LOL! Then they go on to talk about the ice calving in West Antarctica, where only a tiny portion of the total Antarctic ice is located. Of course, that would be like the entire United States being covered with ice which is getting thicker, except for Oregon, which is getting thinner, and declaring that the United States is losing ice! http://www.nature.com/news/2005/050516/full/050516-10.html

I can get some official documents, but I'll have to get them back from my son-in-law.

[GOP_1900AD]

The tide gages upon which the claim of "rising sea level due to global warming" is based are fixed to the earth's crust, which is sinking. The entire North Atlantic shore is sinking. That's why when you look at a map of the Atlantic, you see all those estuaries. They are river valleys that sank.

[quantim]

If Algore who invented the Internet had any idea how fast this network is flying through the Universe, well, Earth doesn't count. At least to those that get the math.