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)
(Score: 0, Troll) by hemocyanin on Sunday August 23 2020, @05:30PM (2 children)
It was Obama that took GWB's 2 wars to 7 -- Trump hasn't been perfect of course, Democrats goaded him into bombing Syria, but this isn't 1970 and Democrats are as far from the party as peace as possible. Makes sense though -- after enacting Nixon's health care plan and Republican free trade wet dreams, they might as well be warmongering assholes. They sure have no qualms using the power of government illegally in their attempts to take back the white house.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 23 2020, @08:04PM (1 child)
You've gone senile, better get re-tested for your driver's license.
(Score: 1) by hemocyanin on Monday August 24 2020, @06:14AM
2 wars to 7: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/peace-president-how-obama-came-to-bomb-seven-countries-in-six-years-9753131.html [independent.co.uk]
You're right about my criticism of "Nixon's HC plan" -- Nixon's was more liberal: https://www.livescience.com/51536-health-care-debates-political-opportunism.html [livescience.com]
Obamagate -- tip meet iceberg: https://thefederalist.com/2020/08/14/kevin-clinesmith-corrupt-fbi-attorney-who-falsified-carter-page-fisa-warrant-expected-to-plead-guilty/ [thefederalist.com] All Nixon did was a little robbery. This was using perjury to get a secret court -- secret courts are so fash -- to violate the 4A rights of an opposition candidate. That's fucking ugly coup level shit. If you're partisanship can't let you see that, then all that's left for you is to embrace neoliberal neoauthoritarianism, death squads like Obama ran, and enforced conformity of ideology. Dark shit.