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It's big. It's cold. And it's melting into the world's oceans.
It's Zachariae Isstrom, the latest in a string of Greenland glaciers to undergo rapid change in our warming world. A new NASA-funded study published today in the journal Science finds that Zachariae Isstrom broke loose from a glaciologically stable position in 2012 and entered a phase of accelerated retreat. The consequences will be felt for decades to come.
The reason? Zachariae Isstrom is big. It drains ice from an area of 35,440 square miles (91,780 square kilometers). That's about 5 percent of the Greenland Ice Sheet. All by itself, it holds enough water to raise global sea level by more than 18 inches (46 centimeters) if it were to melt completely. And now it's on a crash diet, losing 5 billion tons of mass every year. All that ice is crumbling into the North Atlantic Ocean.
"North Greenland glaciers are changing rapidly," said lead author Jeremie Mouginot, an assistant researcher in the Department of Earth System Science at the University of California, Irvine. "The shape and dynamics of Zachariae Isstrom have changed dramatically over the last few years. The glacier is now breaking up and calving high volumes of icebergs into the ocean, which will result in rising sea levels for decades to come."
(Score: 2, Informative) by jmorris on Wednesday November 18 2015, @04:14AM
Little early to say what this winter brings but we know about the previous one. A minute of Google gets this:
20.01.2015 17:53 Age: 301 days
Ice is accumulating on Greenland at a faster rate than average, according to the latest data. This follows a dramatic slow down in the melt rate observed last summer and may be evidence of greater than expected variability in the Arctic climate system.
Greenland's ice sheet appears to be growing faster this winter than in recent years, according to new data from the Danish Meteorological Institute.
This increased rate of ice accumulation follows a virtual standstill in the loss of mass from the huge ice sheet last year that was reported by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) of the US.
Ice is currently accumulating at a faster rate than the average over the period from 1990 to 2011 and since the end of November it has been growing at its fastest rate in at least four years, according to the DMI data (see bottom panel of third graphic on the right). Ice accumulation is occurring over an area of the ice sheet that is significantly larger than the average area of accumulation for the period from 1990 to 2011, with particularly high accumulation rates in the south east.
Last month NOAA reported satellite data showing that the rate of ice loss from the Greenland Ice Sheet slowed significantly in 2014. NOAA's annual Arctic Report Card document published in December states that there was a “negligible” loss of ice mass amounting to just 6 billion tonnes from the Greenland Ice Sheet between June 2013 and June 2014.
Nobody has anything close to accurate record longer than a century, especially in places like the heart of Greenland's glaciers. Most of the numbers used today are indirect based on albedo and other error prone measurements.
But don't let Science get in the way of the daily devotional. Carry on.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 18 2015, @09:13AM
Citizen science at its finest... one minute search inside google's filter bubble. Then cherry pick the best-of parts you really really want to hear. Oh wow.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Wednesday November 18 2015, @04:38PM
You mean like the corporate scientists that should be doing real science?
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 3, Informative) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday November 18 2015, @05:17PM
Oh yeah, cherry picking at it's finest!! Notice he doesn't include links. Because if he did you would notice these gems:
Last month NOAA reported satellite data showing that the rate of ice loss from the Greenland Ice Sheet slowed significantly in 2014.
The Greenland Ice Sheet normally accumulates ice during the northern hemisphere autumn and winter period and loses ice mass during the late spring and summer; for an ice sheet to be stable over time then the winter gains must balance the summer losses. However, in recent years more mass has been lost in the melt seasons than has been accumulated during the rest of the time meaning that the Greenland Ice Sheet has been shrinking.