Word: greenlands
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Grim News from Greenland...
...conversely, they could make the impact even worse than expected. And according to a study that sent tremors through the scientific community last week, that is exactly what seems to be happening in Greenland. Glaciers that flow toward the ocean in the southern half of that enormous frozen island are among the world's fastest moving, and their massive outpouring of ice now contributes fully a sixth of the annual rise in sea level. According to a study in the current issue of Science, they have nearly doubled their rate of flow over the past five years, to about...
...computer climate model anticipated that increase, which means that all current predictions about how much sea level could rise--the latest U.N. report estimated it at a half-meter (about 1.5 ft.) by the end of the century--are too low and will have to be revised upward. Greenland's ice cap covers more than 650,000 sq. mi. and in places stands nearly 2 miles thick. "If it all melted or otherwise slid into the ocean, sea level would rise by 20 ft. or so," says Michael Oppenheimer, a professor of geosciences and international affairs at Princeton. Under conventional...
...just the rise in sea level that makes the surprising news out of Greenland so disturbing. That is only one more hint that climate change may hinge on tipping points, where relatively small changes in temperature can suddenly cause disproportionately large effects. In Greenland, it's meltwater greasing the way for massive outflows of ice. In Antarctica, which has one ice sheet the size of Greenland's and another nearly 10 times as large, the same sort of leverage could eventually come into play, with even greater consequences. Yet another tipping point could come as ice sheets shrink...
...North Atlantic, meanwhile, scientists have been warning for more than two decades about an influx of freshwater--not just from Greenland but also from melting icebergs and increasing mainland runoff. The resulting drop in salinity could change the density of surface water enough to prevent it from sinking as it cools and returning south to the tropics where it can replenish ocean currents like the Gulf Stream. And because the Gulf Stream is the only reason much of Western Europe has so mild and temperate a climate, such a shutdown of that conveyor belt of heat could be nothing short...