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posted by martyb on Friday March 29 2019, @08:02AM   Printer-friendly
from the what-about-all-the-other-ones dept.

A major Greenland glacier that was one of the fastest shrinking ice and snow masses on Earth is growing again, a new NASA study finds.

The Jakobshavn (YA-cob-shawv-en) glacier around 2012 was retreating about 1.8 miles (3 kilometers) and thinning nearly 130 feet (almost 40 meters) annually. But it started growing again at about the same rate in the past two years, according to a study in Monday’s Nature Geoscience . Study authors and outside scientists think this is temporary.

“That was kind of a surprise. We kind of got used to a runaway system,” said Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland ice and climate scientist Jason Box. “The good news is that it’s a reminder that it’s not necessarily going that fast. But it is going.”

Box, who wasn’t part of the study, said Jakobshavn is “arguably the most important Greenland glacier because it discharges the most ice in the northern hemisphere. For all of Greenland, it is king.”

A natural cyclical cooling of North Atlantic waters likely caused the glacier to reverse course, said study lead author Ala Khazendar, a NASA glaciologist on the Oceans Melting Greenland (OMG) project. Khazendar and colleagues say this coincides with a flip of the North Atlantic Oscillation — a natural and temporary cooling and warming of parts of the ocean that is like a distant cousin to El Nino in the Pacific.

While this is “good news” on a temporary basis, this is bad news on the long term because it tells scientists that ocean temperature is a bigger player in glacier retreats and advances than previously thought, said NASA climate scientist Josh Willis, a study co-author. Over the decades the water has been and will be warming from man-made climate change, he said, noting that about 90 percent of the heat trapped by greenhouse gases goes into the oceans.

https://www.apnews.com/b19abfb0a0534b51925aa121806255a8


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  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 29 2019, @09:25AM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 29 2019, @09:25AM (#821718)

    plenty of options, anything from levees to simply moving slowly inland.

    Yes. Miami has no problems. Tell them that.

    Say it's not true! Nature has cycles. Like ice ages and interglacials.

    Get a clue, idiot. When you can't fathom timescales longer than age of your grandma, then please fuck off and leave it to the experts.

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  • (Score: 0, Troll) by Freeman on Friday March 29 2019, @02:35PM (2 children)

    by Freeman (732) on Friday March 29 2019, @02:35PM (#821809) Journal

    How old are the supposed experts and why should I trust them to care about the next 20 years, let alone 200 years? Also, which experts? Do they believe in population reduction? What methods do they believe would be best for population reduction? Are they members of PETA? Do they think a dog's life is equivalent to a human's? Do they think dogs are better than humans? Would they like to get in at the ground floor on a new opportunity?

    --
    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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 29 2019, @06:14PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 29 2019, @06:14PM (#821949)

      More important question Mr. Faithful, just how old do you think the Earth really is?

    • (Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Saturday March 30 2019, @09:29PM

      by hendrikboom (1125) Subscriber Badge on Saturday March 30 2019, @09:29PM (#822477) Homepage Journal

      Regardless of inherent merit. dogs do not master a technology that can destroy most life on earth.