Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by chromas on Saturday August 22 2020, @10:00PM   Printer-friendly
from the friend-or-floe? dept.

Sea level rise quickens as Greenland ice sheet sheds record amount:

Greenland's massive ice sheet saw a record net loss of 532 billion tonnes last year, raising red flags about accelerating sea level rise, according to new findings.

That is equivalent to an additional three million tonnes of water streaming into global oceans every day, or six Olympic pools every second.

Crumbling glaciers and torrents of melt-water slicing through Greenland's ice block—as thick as ten Eiffel Towers end-to-end—were the single biggest source of global sea level rise in 2019 and accounted for 40 percent of the total, researchers reported in the journal Communications Earth & Environment.

[...] "2019 and the four other record-loss years have all occurred in the last decade," lead author Ingo Sasgen, a glaciologist at the Helmholtze Centre for Polar and Marine Research in Germany, told AFP.

The ice sheet is now tracking the worst-case global warming scenario of the UN's climate science advisory panel, the IPCC, noted Andrew Shepherd, director of the Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling at the University of Leeds.

[...] Until 2000, Greenland's [runoff ...] was compensated by fresh snowfall.

[...] In 2019, the ice sheet lost a total of 1.13 trillion tonnes, about 45 percent from glaciers sliding into the sea, and 55 percent from melted ice, said Sasgen. It gained about 600 billion tonnes through precipitation.

A study in the same journal last week concluded that the Greenland's ice sheet has passed a "tipping point", and is now doomed to disintegrate, though on what time scale is unknown.

Journal References:
Ingo Sasgen, Bert Wouters, Alex S. Gardner, et al. Return to rapid ice loss in Greenland and record loss in 2019 detected by the GRACE-FO satellites [open], Communications Earth & Environment (DOI: 10.1038/s43247-020-0010-1)

Michalea D. King, Ian M. Howat, Salvatore G. Candela, et al. Dynamic ice loss from the Greenland Ice Sheet driven by sustained glacier retreat [open], Communications Earth & Environment (DOI: 10.1038/s43247-020-0001-2)


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 2, Informative) by khallow on Sunday August 23 2020, @01:59AM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Sunday August 23 2020, @01:59AM (#1040606) Journal
    Hi!

    All that whinging about hoax, not driven by industrial activity, or whatever stupid excuse he coyld make up to not feel bad about his oil stocks... god damn

    Never happened. [soylentnews.org] I've always expected some sea level rise from global warming due to human activity. From the story:

    The ice sheet is now tracking the worst-case global warming scenario of the UN's climate science advisory panel, the IPCC, noted Andrew Shepherd, director of the Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling at the University of Leeds.

    It's also tracking milder scenarios too. The real meat (and the real evidence for these environmental models) of the scenarios happens conveniently later. As to PinkyGigglebrain's concerns in their reply about losing control, well that happened way back when we grew a lot of people and had an industrial age. We're actually regaining control with lower fertility, greater wealth, and people who care about the environment.

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +1  
       Informative=1, Disagree=1, Total=2
    Extra 'Informative' Modifier   0  

    Total Score:   2