NASA data: Greenland, Antarctic ice melt worsening

WASHINGTON — New satellite information shows that ice sheets in Greenland and western Antarctica continue to shrink faster than scientists thought and in some places are already in runaway melt mode.

British scientists for the first time calculated changes in the height of the vulnerable but massive ice sheets and found them especially worse at their edges. That's where warmer water eats away from below. In some parts of Antarctica, ice sheets have been losing 30 feet a year in thickness since 2003, according to a paper published online Thursday in the journal Nature.

Some of those areas are about a mile thick, so they've still got plenty of ice to burn through. But the drop in thickness is speeding up. In parts of Antarctica, the yearly rate of thinning from 2003 to 2007 is 50 percent higher than it was from 1995 to 2003.

These new measurements, based on 50 million laser readings from a NASA satellite, confirm what some of the more pessimistic scientists thought: The melting along the crucial edges of the two major ice sheets is accelerating and is in a self-feeding loop. The more the ice melts, the more water surrounds and eats away at the remaining ice.

"To some extent it's a runaway effect. The question is how far will it run?" said the study's lead author, Hamish Pritchard of the British Antarctic Survey. "It's more widespread than we previously thought."

The study doesn't answer the crucial question of how much this worsening melt will add to projections of sea level rise from man-made global warming. Some scientists have previously estimated that steady melting of the two ice sheets will add about 3 feet, maybe more, to sea levels by the end of the century. But the ice sheets are so big it would probably take hundreds of years for them to completely disappear.

As scientists watch ice shelves retreat or just plain collapse, some thought the problem could slow or be temporary. The latest measurements eliminate "the most optimistic view," said Penn State University professor Richard Alley, who wasn't part of the study.

The research found that 81 of the 111 Greenland glaciers surveyed are thinning at an accelerating, self-feeding pace.

The key problem is not heat in the air, but the water near the ice sheets, Pritchard said. The water is not just warmer but its circulation is also adding to the melt.

"It is alarming," said Jason Box of Ohio State University, who also wasn't part of the study.

Worsening data, including this report, keep proving "that we're underestimating" how sensitive the ice sheets are to changes, he said.

___

On the Net

Nature: http://www.nature.com/

Comments

[Ssebo]

30 Feet a year; 1 mile thick. That's roughly 1.5 century.

Our grandchildren will be around to switch off the lights in our harbours.

[watchTVgetSTUPID]

And now that the Arctic ic cap is increasing from year to year, we will be told by the alarmists who extrapolate climate trends that we are headed towards another ice age.

[realpolitic]

Do deniers even glance at the article? You know you posted your comment under an article entitled "NASA data: Greenland, Antarctic ice melt worsening!"

[shockmagog]

He should change his moniker to "watchFOXg­etsSTUPID.­"

[realpolitic]

Paul Krugman in the NY Times said today...

"So, have you enjoyed the debate over health care reform? Have you been impressed by the civility of the discussion and the intellectual honesty of reform opponents?"

"If so, you’ll love the next big debate: the fight over climate change."

"Even corporations are losing patience with the deniers: earlier this week Pacific Gas and Electric canceled its membership in the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in protest over the chamber’s “disingenuous attempts to diminish or distort the reality” of climate change."

"Second, the best available economic analyses suggest that even deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions would impose only modest costs on the average family. Earlier this month, the Congressional Budget Office released an analysis of the effects of Waxman-Markey, concluding that in 2020 the bill would cost the average family only $160 a year, or 0.2 percent of income. That’s roughly the cost of a postage stamp a day."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/25/opinion/25krugman.html?ref=opinion

[spikeykitten]

"that in 2020 the bill would cost the average family only $160 a year, or 0.2 percent of income"

Then just make it $320 a year, or 0.4 percent of income then the greenies and dems can pay for it themselves.

[timezone]

The 320 won't matter much if no one is alive because of climate change. There will be people ignoring it as they have to wade to walk out their door.

[shockmagog]

We no longer have the wherewithal to carry your load.

Time to start pulling your own weight.

[realpolitic]

Sure, conservatives love to brag about driving around in SUV's, but when it comes to cleaning up the costs it is always up to someone else! By ignoring climate change, the health care crisis, and income extremes, what exactly do conservatives have solutions for, besides ignoring problems?

[MekhongKurt]

I *just* read online within the m=past quarter-hour or so that Apple has announced they've cancelled their membership in the Chamber of Commerce, effective immediately, because of the Chamber's manic Flat-Eath-­Society-li­ke state of denial.

I live in Bangkok, but even here there are deniers. I say "even here" because there is a Buddhist temple near the sea (to which I'll come back in a moment) that has captivated quite a bit of local attention. Twenty years ago, it was maybe a kilometer from the high-tide line. When I got here just over 15 years ago, it was still most of a milometer away, though the sea had crept in a bit closer. The resident monks finalloy had to build a floor partway up on the ground floor when the high tide started coming into the temple itself, and they raised their living quarters behind the temple up on poles, way up off the ground. If local scientists have their predictions anywhere near right, in as soon as a decade, substantial parts of Greater Bangkok could be underwater, some all the time, others at high tide. Ten years. And I've watched it. (Maybe someone let their bathtub overflow!!!)

The deniers are getting downright creepy. "Wingnuts go Environmen­tal."

[realpolitic]

Monitors, why do you let RomeoMD25 post his spam over and over? He dominates the discussion with nonsense by flooding the tread with the same posts. It kills any intelligent discussion and overrepresents the very minority denier point of view.

[RomeoMD25]

Carbon dioxide (CO2) is the principal gas that trees and other plants need to survive, just like oxygen (O2) is the principal gas that humans and other animals require. Trees absorb CO2 and release O2 -- animals inhale O2 and exhale CO2. See how nice this all works! Earth's first, primitive forests made their prolific debut 300 million years ago during the Carboniferous Period. Before then, the atmosphere held far more CO2 but concentrations declined throughout the Carboniferous Period as plants flourished. During the Carboniferous Period the atmosphere became greatly depleted of CO2 (declining from about 2500 ppm to 350 ppm) so that by the end of the Carboniferous the CO2-impoverished atmosphere was less favorable to plant life and plant growth slowed dramatically.

Today, CO2 concentrations are barely at 380 ppm -- still CO2-impoverished. Many scientists strongly believe that we should be trying to produce more CO2, not less. And for good reason.

[Exusian]

So, that means plant life must have been really CO2-impoverished back before the industrial revolution, when the CO2 level was only about 280 ppm, right?

And heck, it's a wonder plants survived the last glaciation at all seeing as the CO2 level dropped to only around 180 ppm!

Not only does Romeo not have much of a grasp of basic physics, he also doesn't have much of grasp of basic plant physiology.

[realpolitic]

He knows what channel Fox News is on and that is enough!

[Pharos]

What is your definition of "CO2-impoverished"?

[realpolitic]

Why keep repeating the same spam?

[Exusian]

Maybe he gets paid by how many times he posts it?

[texfly]

I looked up "Science Fiction" in my Oxford English Unabridged Dictionary and found a picture of RomeoMD25 there.

[realpolitic]

Romeo is not a real person, just a composite of conservative ideologies programmed by a computer!

[GuyRC]

It would be more convincing if you could name any of the many scientists who strongly believe that we should be trying to produce more CO2.

[realpolitic]

What about Dr. Frankenstein?

[fumes]

so we're all in agreement then..

runaway global warming has never happened before!

lol..

[Exusian]

Define "runaway."

[MekhongKurt]

Stand by, please, Mr. President.

[fumes]

here ya go ''long hall''..

runaway |ˈrənəˌwā|
noun
a person who has run away, esp. from their family or an institution.
• [often as adj. ] an animal or vehicle that is running out of control : a runaway train.
• [as adj. ] denoting something happening or done quickly, easily, or uncontrollably : the runaway success of the book.

[realpolitic]

No, I would say global warmig has never run away from an institution before. Many deniers may have!

[Exusian]

Taking the "running out of control

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/wires/2009/09/23/nasa-data-greenland-antar_0_ws_296332.html" definition, here are three examples:

1) Venus
2) The end-Permian event
3) the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum

All three are examples of "out of control" greenhouse warming.
Note that none of your definitions of "out of control" mean that the process does not eventually come to a halt.

[fumes]

define: ''halt''

[realpolitic]

First define "define." I got you there!

[Pharos]

Just how does your comment contribute to intelligent discourse? Do you really not understand "halt"? The term "runaway process" does need clarification as not everyone uses the expression to mean the same thing.

[StephenBP]

Notice how Romeo is blowing off topic again. Romeo is denying that there is any global warming at all now. Yesterday he hung his hat on Richard Lindzen's words, and even Lindzen admits there is global warming. I guess he doesn't trust Lindzen any more. BTW, we are still waiting for the scientific refutation of carbon dioxide induced warming. Instead we are getting some really wild bloviation about global conspiracies. Have you switched to a double wrap of Reynolds?

[Exusian]

That's because Romeo is not interested in being consistent, he is only interested in obfuscation and spreading disinformation.

[RomeoMD25]

Until end of 2008 i believed in global warming
i changed my mind..

To understand how insane the Cap-and-Trade bill really is you need to know that it based on the belief that carbon dioxide emissions must be reduced to avoid a global warming that is NOT happening.
So Cap-and-Trade is NOT about greenhouse gases or global warming. It is about trading credits for the right to GENERATE or USE ENERGY.

How insane is that?

Nothing is more worthless than carbon credits. Nothing is more dangerous to the economic future of the nation than the Cap-and-Trade Act. The U.S. Senate must defeat this bill which has already been passed by the House. YOU must defeat this bill by demanding your Senators vote against it.

[fumes]

say ro..

''Until end of 2008 i believed in global warming
i changed my mind.. ''

lol.. you must live in the northeast with lindzen and me!

[realpolitic]

Romeo changed his mind because he turned on Fox News. Funny, how because Romeo "changed his mind" about a whole field of science, it is suddenly invalid. If he changed his mind about physics, would it suddenly be worthless?

[spikeykitten]

The planet has been warming since the last Last Glacial Maximum (Ice Age peak) about 20,000 years ago.
By the way the internal combustion engine, coal fired power plants and people had nothing to do with it.

[Exusian]

No, actually, the planet has been generally cooling since the Holocene Climate Optimum of ~6000 years ago.

Both the warming after the glacial maximum and the cooling since the climate optimum was due to Earth's Milankovic orbital cycles.

That cooling trend should have continued, but in the early 20th century greenhouse warming overcame the general cooling tend and in the latter half of the century it sharply reversed the trend.

[RomeoMD25]

There are many articles explaining how the carbon trading market operates It mostly involves the UN and a Kyoto era instrument called CDM.s which has netted and wasted billions already. Often the Chicago based CCX trading desk is involved, which last I read was 20% owned by Goldman Sachs. Global Warming doesn’t exist to begin with. Even if it did, cap and trade would not cool the planet. It only guarantees robbing the already half-dead taxpayer and lining the pockets of existing billionaires and other criminals.

[shockmagog]

Once the ball gets rolling, the fossil fuel industry doesn't need to spend a dime to push their propaganda tactics of "stall and obfuscatio­n."

We see an example here.

[realpolitic]

Just more spam!

[Bashacrat]

Don't be afraid, let it all melt.

[shockmagog]

'(Walter Meier, a scientist at the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado) cautions the new findings do not mean the Arctic is in recovery, or that global warming is slowing down.'

'"I look at it as a one-year reprieve," he said. "I don't expect that to continue."­'

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/09/090921-arctic-sea-ice.html

Try googling "This year's cooler-tha­n-expected summer means the Arctic probably won't experience ice-free summers until 2030 or 2040, scientists say," and you won't get the NG article, but a host of right wing blog shills for the fossil fuel industry, which parrot the aforementioned subtitle.

This may prove to be good news for fans of maintaining our unsustainable energy status quo: they have a little more time to finally get their act together and face reality.

[mamacat]

If there is anyone reading these comments who is in any doubt, please google "national geographic global warming," to see where the society stands on this issue. While not made up exclusively of scientists, they do not deny the findings of the scientific community, and they have been working hard to help educate their readers about the dangers of global warming.

[Richard2]

Last year the National Geographic magazine made comments inferring that the Arctic Sea Ice was going to disappear in the next year or so.

In fact, the Arctic sea ice extent minimum this month was 23% higher than two years ago, and the North Pole remains largely covered by ice. If the National Geographic magazine is an objective news source, it will report accurately the recovery of the Arctic sea ice over the past two years. So far, it hasn't.

[realpolitic]

According to National Geographic­...

"This year's cooler-tha­n-expected summer means the Arctic probably won't experience ice-free summers until 2030 or 2040, scientists say."

"Some models had previously predicted that the Arctic could be ice free in summer by as soon as 2013, due to rising temperatures from global warming."

"Meier cautions the new findings do not mean the Arctic is in recovery, or that global warming is slowing down."

"For one thing, this year's ice is thinner than in the past, and thus more vulnerable to future melt."


"This winter's maximum Arctic sea ice extent was 5.85 million square miles (15,150,000 square kilometers)—about 278,000 square miles (720,000 square kilometers) less than the Arctic average between 1979 and 2000."

""That's a loss about the size of the state of Texas," said Walter Meier of the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) in Boulder, Colorado."

"Ice a year or more old—thicker, hardier, and less prone to melting than younger ice—was at an all-time low at the end of this past winter, the new report says."

"Ice older than two years once accounted for some 30 to 40 percent of the Arctic's wintertime cover and made up 25 percent as recently as 2007."

"But last year it represented only 14 percent of the maximum. This year the figure fell to 10 percent."

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/09/090921-arctic-sea-ice.html

Is the magazine still "objective'?

[StephenBP]

Those NASA scientists, boy, they sure are pulling a hoax on everyone, ain't they? What do they know about anything. Why I went to this web site and it showed that they this global warming stuff isn't happening or it is caused by the sun or what not, but these so called scientists, boy, they have no idea what they are talking about. You really got to listen to Rush and Glen to get the truth these days. Scientists. Ha. What do THEY know?

[realpolitic]

Yes, they are just pointy headed elitists! Trust no one but Glenn and Rush!

[RomeoMD25]

Guess you didn't try my experiment with the ice cubes and the glass of water. Basic physics tells us that water expands when it freezes, therefore it takes up more volume than when it was water. So, when it melts, it takes up less volume, causing a drop in the water level.

You ask who is being cheated and of what by this scam. The American people are the ones being cheated

Historical and climatological facts do not support the threat of Global Warming.
During the last "Climatic Optimum", from 700 to 1200 AD, the planet was much warmer
than it is now. This led to a population explosion in Scandinavia (which gave rise to the Viking Age)

Later, during the "Little Ice Age" of 1400 to 1800, Norse settlements in Greenland were wiped out
and Iceland nearly followed.

[OneVoiceInACrowd]

I am not sure, but did you just tell me that when ice melts in a glass of water the overall water level goes down?

that explains many, many things.

[AntiClast]

Try the experiment yourself. Fill an 8ounce glass 3/4 full, add 1 ice cube, mark the water level, then wait for the ice to melt.
You see, the physics of ice is that it floats in water. Look up Archimedes principle.

[StephenBP]

What are you talking about? Who said anything about floating ice? The problem is grounded ice, not floating ice. When grounded ice, i.e., ice on land, above sea level, when that melts we have a major problem. So NASA scientists are scamming the American people? I don't believe you. BTW, it is warmer now, and the temperature is rising faster now, than at any time in the last one or even two thousand years, so somebody is telling you lies. Where do you dig them up? I have to log off. I am sure you will fill the blogosphere with more of what I consider to be nonsense over night. Good luck. I will refute it all in the morning.

[texfly]

Give a dufus a little bit of knowledge and they go absolutely crazy with it. Yes, Ice expands as it freezes and contacts when it melts. When gets to 4 degrees Celsius it starts to expand again. You know what Celsius is don't you? It's a unit of temperature on our planet. What is it on yours?

For someone who blogs a lot, I'd suggest that you spend 1000 hrs of learning then 1 minute of blogging instead of the other way around.

[Exusian]

Yes, basic physics tells us that water expands when it freezes, therefore it takes up more volume than an equivalent mass of water.
But that same physics tells us that when ice melts it does NOT cause a drop in the water level, the level remains UNCHANGED.

Unless the ice is floating is sea water, in which case the water level will go UP slightly.

Why?

Floating sea ice is not the same stuff as what it is floating in -- sea water -- because it contains far less salt.
This makes ice less dense than seawater, so it does not displace an equivalent volume as it would if the ice were floating in fresh water.
Therefore when ice melts it increases the water level.

[StephenBP]

Greenland is a poor proxy for an entire planet. There are local variations in climate over time that do not prove a blessed thing about the rest of the planet. Did your Greenland friend tell you that the settled area was never lush, and the " settlers existence was always harsh and meager, especially due to their disdain for other peoples and ways of living. They attempted to live a European lifestyle in an arctic climate, side by side with Inuit who easily outlasted them. They starved surrounded by oceans and yet apprently didn't try to survive on fish! Instead of hunting whales in kayaks, they farmed cattle, goats, and sheep -- despite having to keep them in a barn 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, for a full 5 months out of the year. It was a constant challenge to get enough fodder for the winter. Starvation of the animals was frequent, emaciation routine. Grazing requirements and growing fodder for the winter led to over-production of pastures, erosion, and the need to go further and further afield to sustain the animals. Deforestation for pastures and firewood proceeded at unsustainable rates. After a couple of centuries, it led to such desperate measures as cutting precious sod for housing construction and even burning it for cooking and heating fuel. When finally confronted with several severe winters in a row, they, along with the little remaining livestock, simply starved before spring arrived."

[RomeoMD25]

I have a friend who was born in Greenland. His degree is in archaeology. He confirms that several hundred years ago there were Viking colonies there growing food in areas that are now permafrost.

Greenland must have been warmer then, there is no doubt at all. They are thought to have left when the climate turned colder and the colonies were no longer viable. Perhaps they stopped driving their cars, flying and generating electricity with coal.

[Exusian]

Actually, the Greenland Norse mainly grew hay for their dairy cows, plus a few root and leaf crops in their household vegetable gardens.

And they didn't leave, they starved to death after they ate their last cow.

Add history to the subjects that you have no real grasp of.

[realpolitic]

I wonder why they could not catch any fish! Didn't some follow the ice sheets all the way to America?

[Exusian]

Actually, the Greenland Norse mainly grew hay for their dairy cows, plus a few root and leaf crops in their household vegetable gardens.

And they didn't leave, they starved after they ate their last cow.

Add history to the subjects that you have no real grasp of.

[texfly]

I looked up "Science Fiction" in my Oxford English Unabridged Dictionary and found a picture of RomeoMD25 there.