Greenland Melting: Ice Cube 109 Miles Long, Wide and Deep in One Year Alone
by David Sassoon - Jan 16th, 2008
Scientists studying the behavior of the Greenland ice sheet since 1958 report accelerated melting due to global warming over the last 15 years, with the five biggest thaws occurring since 1995.
The 1998 ice loss was the biggest measured.
It was equivalent to 109 cubic miles of ice that melted into the ocean -- the mother of all ice cubes.
The researchers reported in the Journal of Climate:
We attribute significantly increased Greenland summer warmth and ice melt since 1990 to global warming.....The Greenland ice sheet is likely to be highly susceptible to ongoing global warming.
Greenland contains enough ice to raise world sea levels by more than 20 feet.
For more, see today's report in the New York Times: In Greenland, Ice and Instability.
Another study just published in Nature Geoscience corroborates that similar trends are observable in Antarctica. Researchers report ice melt there has accelerated almost 60 percent in the past decade: West Antarctica lost 132 billion tons of ice in 2006, up from 83 billion tons shed in 1996.
Bookmark/Search this post with:
Post new comment