Beam me to Planet Gore !
Posted on 01/27/2011 8:39:10 AM PST by Names Ash Housewares
The hotter summers the Arctic is seeing might not be as catastrophic for Greenland's ice as previously feared — it might actually slow down the flow of glaciers there, new research suggests.
(Excerpt) Read more at ouramazingplanet.com ...
"Safer than was feared at the last IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] Assessment Report," Shepherd told OurAmazingPlanet. "Our data suggest that one potential threat to future sea level rise from Greenland will have little or no impact. However, we are still not sure how ocean warming will affect glaciers that flow into the sea."
I shoveled quite a bit of global warming this morning. Ugh.
The IPCC wrong? I am shocked! /sarc
In other words, the rate that glaciers retreat increases after each summer warm up. It accelerates over time. Another factor that would speed up the natural process of glacial melting is, as sunlight-reflecting white ice melts a bit during the summer, more dark heat-absorbing surface below is exposed to sunlight.
It isn't as if it is all going to go away any time soon.
Drat!
Got out-pinged on a thread by the steely!
The Greenland ice sheet covers roughly 80 percent of the surface of the massive island and holds enough water to raise sea levels by 23 feet (7 meters) if it were to melt completely.
The statement is scientifically incomplete and in error in promoting the idea that if the total amount of ice covering Greenland all melted, that sea levels would rise by 23 feet.
For that to happen, it would not only have to melt "completely" it would have to melt all at once and so rapidly that it immediately added to the sea levels. None could melt so slowly that it would be taken up in evaporation from the sea, adding to the clouds, adding to precipitation, which falls on land as well, and some of which becomes part of lakes and not the seas, and some of which becomes part of the vast ground waters from which civilization makes wells to take it back up.
No. For the the alarmist phrase to become a reality, it would never be from the gradual melting of climate change, but some catastrophe that melted it AT ONCE.
ooops
Put Gore there and his hot air might do it!
I've noticed somewhat of a pattern to articles like these...
“Surprising” results that fly in the face of AGW fear mongering, then some comment along the lines of oh but it doesn't mean AGW isn't going to kill us all.. then followed by, we really need to study more!
Keep that funding going of course.
Someone with more math skills can take it from here and figure out what happens if you spread this volume of ice/water over the surface of the ocean :-)
Sources:
149,000,000 km2 earth area & 361,000,000 km2 water area http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2001/DanielChen.shtml
510,000,000 km2 Total surface http://www.universetoday.com/25756/surface-area-of-the-earth/
2,166,000 km2 Surface of Greenland http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_land_area_of_Greenland
The Greenland Ice Sheet (Kalaallisut: Sermersuaq) is a vast body of ice covering 1,710,000 square kilometers (660,235 sq mi), roughly 80% of the surface of Greenland." "The thickness is generally more than 2 km (1.24 mi) (see picture) and over 3 km (1.86 mi) at its thickest point. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenland_ice_sheet
Okay, I'm posting to myself now because I can't leave this alone, but my basic calculations (with help from Google to remember and find various conversions) says that the volume of the Greenland ice sheet would spread-out, at 23" high (or 0.6m) and cover 8,800,000,000 square meters. Surface of the ocean: 361,000,000,000 sq meters.
Can you say "drop in the bucket" ;-)
Most of the area of Greenland is under water already.
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Actually, using gross approximations and your numbers, 23 feet isn’t far off. I see how the greenies made the computation. I did not compensate for the fact that ice is less dense than liquid water and came up with about 30 feet.
Interesting. If you get a chance, would you mind sharing your calculations? I'd like to see how that works (and see what I should have done ;-) Thanks!
I tossed the spreadsheet. But it was something like:
Depth of G. Ice Sheet (estimated 2.5 km average)
x Area of G. Ice Sheet (km)
No adjustment made for difference in density of ice vs water. That would bring the number down some.
I was not trying to deal with the factual accuracy of the statement (as pertains to the quantity of ice), which - the statement - was a quote from the article.
I was pointing out the unscientific assumption that that ice melting from climate change would raise the sea levels by an amount (any amount) said to be equal to the water that ice represents.
No matter what is the factually correct amount of ice/water on Greenland, climate change IS NOT going to melt it all at once, send it into the sea all at once.
It will be a gradual process. The amount it adds will also add to global evaporation from the seas, global cloud formation, global precipitation. Its waters will, through the total dynamic of the oceans’ role in the climate system, evaporate and wind up in clouds, from clouds it will wind up in rain over land as well as seas; from rain it will wind up in lakes and in ground water as deep as humans dig wells - in addition to adding to SOME component of the total sea level.
That component - that may add to sea levels, due to climate change, will never be the sum total of the ice/water on Greenland.
For that to happen, it would have to very suddenly and completely melt all at once, due to some catastrophe; not due to the gradual melting that may occur during any period of climate change. In a period of slow melting it will add to all forms of water across the earth - many land bound as well, not just the “sea level”.
How much? It cannot be calculated. The general climate and actual weather variables that a gradual melting will encounter cannot be accurately predicted. Therefore, where all throughout the earth all the ice/water will wind up also CANNOT be predicted.
What is scientifically clear is it will NOT, all of it (no matter what that amount is), simply add to sea levels.
Understood (and agreed :-)
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