Greenland Ice Sheet is Melting Faster, Study Says

National Geographic ^ | 08/10/2006 | John Roach

[massgopguy]

Ice has a greater volume that liquid water. So the sea level will go down. Boyle's Law.

[the invisib1e hand]

surely it will all be gone by the time the 2008 election rolls around.

[pabianice]

[Argus]

If this keeps up, the Vikings will be able to move back.

[Clint N. Suhks]

I just have one word...


SOLAR FLARES!

[cogitator]

As for when the current loss started, that's not known; the study is for data collected when the GRACE mission started.

Good question about the last meltdown, I don't know the answer.

Greenland ice sheet volume: ~2.6 million cubic km.

[cogitator]

Ay, that's a problem!

[cogitator]

Ice has a greater volume that liquid water. So the sea level will go down. Boyle's Law.

The Greenland ice sheet is on land, not immersed in water.

[Brad from Tennessee]

This research may have been financed by a solar energy company or an ethanol producers co-op. There is so much conflicting information it is impossible to know who is right, if anyone.

[Antoninus]

Faster than what? Faster than jellyfish are evolving into jelly doughnuts?

[cogitator]

** PING **

[printhead]

I hear some startup brewery is doing just that.

[cogitator]

Faster than what?

Faster than a couple of years ago.

[palmer]

600,000 cubic miles (from ga.water.usgs.gov/edu/watercycleice.html) so the 60 cubic mile loss is still pretty small.

[cogitator]

Gotta keep the Dominator busy, y'know.

[syriacus]

If this would have happened centuries ago, hundreds of lives could have been saved.

The Little Ice Age: When global cooling gripped the world

Europe...enjoyed an undeniably balmy climate during the early medieval period. Agriculture flourished farther north and at higher elevations on mountains than is possible even in today's warmish climate, and harvests generally were good.

Farmers raised wine grapes in England 300 miles north of present limits, and in what now are icebound parts of Greenland, Norse settlers grazed sheep and dairy cattle. In his book Climate History and Modern Man, H.H. Lamb noted that the great burst of cathedral-building and population expansion in medieval Europe coincided with the peak of the Medieval Warm Period.

By about 1400, the climate had cooled to temperatures comparable to today. Over the next century or two, the world would cool still further, bringing on the Little Ice Age. ...

The effects of the Little Ice Age were anything but uniform.

...Perhaps hardest hit were the Norse settlements in Iceland and Greenland. The population of famine-ridden Iceland dwindled during the Little Ice Age to half its previous numbers.

Greenlanders fared even worse. Growing sea ice cut off communication with the outside world beginning about 1370, and when German ships landed in Greenland more than a century later, they found a single frozen corpse but no living colonists among the ruins.

[carumba]

Next problem, please.

You leave Pittsburgh traveling towards NYC. Your train is going 30mph. Ben R. leaves NYC traveling to Pittsburgh on his motorcycle (helmet on) going 88mph. Which traveler will cause more ice to melt in Greenland?

[Brad from Tennessee]

If you aren't already familiar with this website--World Climate Report--they will probably eventually do a critique of this study:

http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2005/05/27/antarctic-ice-a-global-warming-snow-job/

[kallisti]

Hmmm, I get 1/20 meter after 100 years.

[ndt]

"It was "Greenland" before it became completely covered in ice"

Probably, but that was over 100,000 years ago.