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What's Making Glaciers Melt Faster
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| Contributor | ArmyDem |
| Last Edited | ArmyDem Feb 17, 2006 06:13pm |
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| Category | News |
| Media | Weekly News Magazine - TIME Magazine |
| News Date | Saturday, February 18, 2006 12:00:00 AM UTC0:0 |
| Description | A new report sheds light on Greenland's quickening meltdown — and why that's distressing
By MICHAEL LEMONICK
Posted Friday, Feb. 17, 2006
The earth’s climate is so complicated that science is still struggling to figure it out. That’s why — unlike something like, say, quantum physics — it’s hard to make accurate predictions about what will happen. So it came as no surprise, in a sense, that climate observers announced a huge surprise yesterday at the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s annual conference, in St. Louis: the glaciers of Greenland, which carry ice from the interior out to the sea, have gone on a tear. They’re flowing, on average, about twice as fast as they were a decade ago — and even back then, says glacier expert Julian Dowdeswell, of the University of Cambridge, "I was telling my students that they were among the fastest-flowing glaciers on Earth."
The apparent cause of this suddenly far from glacial flow rate is global warming — not because all of the ice itself is melting so fast, but because record melting at its upper surface is letting water percolate down to the bedrock, where it acts as a lubricant. Another factor, says Dowdeswell: ice "tongues" that form where glaciers meet the ocean have broken up over recent years, removing a sort of roadblock that holds them in check.
If all of Greenland’s ice were plopped into the ocean, sea level would rise a catastrophic 20 feet or more. Until yesterday, most experts thought global warming might make it happen in a couple of thousand years. Now they’re talking hundreds. |
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