Hugh Bollinger / Thursday, March 10, 2011

Seas are arisin'...fast

NASA and JPL have just released a study in Geophysical Research Letters based on 20 years of satellite data from the ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica. The melting of the land-based ice masses is not abating but actually happening faster than previous melt models had predicted. It's even accelerating with each satellite measurement. This is hardly good news if you live near any low-lying coastlines in Florida, the Gulf Coast, Holland, or Bangledesh, just to name a few coastal zones. The NASA research has determined that the melting of polar glacial ice has overtaken mountain glacier melting as the most dominant source of global sea level rise and is occurring far sooner than early climate change models had previouly predicted. [caption id="attachment_3352" align="aligncenter" width="278" caption="Glacial ice "]

[/caption] To quote Eric Rignot, JPL's chief investigator and report author: "That ice sheets will dominate future sea level rise is not surprising -- they hold a lot more ice mass than mountain glaciers -- but what is surprising is this increased contribution of the ice sheets is already happening. If present trends continue, sea level is likely to be significantly higher than levels projected by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2007." As the pied piper from the old musical once intoned: "There's trouble in River City boys and girls." As the melting ice and rising sea levels tell us, a bad story is unfolding fast, so you better get ready boys and girls! WHB

"Let us bid" Misha the Flamingo flies north

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Seas are arisin'...fast

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