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NASA Finds Polar Ice Adding More to Rising Seas
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California Girl
NASA Finds Polar Ice Adding More to Rising Seas
In light of a recent thread, I found this news release interesting. It's a scientific study, not a political comment. Be cool. 
News release: 2011-070
March 8, 2011
NASA Finds Polar Ice Adding More to Rising Seas
The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?r ... e_2011-070
PASADENA, Calif. -- The Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are losing mass at an accelerating pace, according to a new NASA-funded satellite study. The findings of the study -- the longest to date of changes in polar ice sheet mass -- suggest these ice sheets are overtaking ice loss from Earth's mountain glaciers and ice caps to become the dominant contributor to global sea level rise, much sooner than model forecasts have predicted.
The nearly 20-year study reveals that in 2006, a year in which comparable results for mass loss in mountain glaciers and ice caps are available from a separate study conducted using other methods, the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets lost a combined mass of 475 gigatonnes a year on average. That's enough to raise global sea level by an average of 1.3 millimeters (.05 inches) a year. (A gigatonne is one billion metric tons, or more than 2.2 trillion pounds.)
The pace at which the polar ice sheets are losing mass was found to be accelerating rapidly. Each year over the course of the study, the two ice sheets lost a combined average of 36.3 gigatonnes more than they did the year before. In comparison, the 2006 study of mountain glaciers and ice caps estimated their loss at 402 gigatonnes a year on average, with a year-over-year acceleration rate three times smaller than that of the ice sheets.
"That ice sheets will dominate future sea level rise is not surprising -- they hold a lot more ice mass than mountain glaciers," said lead author Eric Rignot, jointly of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., and the University of California, Irvine. "What is surprising is this increased contribution by the ice sheets is already happening. If present trends continue, sea level is likely to be significantly higher than levels projected by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2007. Our study helps reduce uncertainties in near-term projections of sea level rise."
Rignot's team combined nearly two decades (1992-2009) of monthly satellite measurements with advanced regional atmospheric climate model data to examine changes in ice sheet mass and trends in acceleration of ice loss.
The study compared two independent measurement techniques. The first characterized the difference between two sets of data: interferometric synthetic aperture radar data from European, Canadian and Japanese satellites and radio echo soundings, which were used to measure ice exiting the ice sheets; and regional atmospheric climate model data from Utrecht University, The Netherlands, used to quantify ice being added to the ice sheets. The other technique used eight years of data from the NASA/German Aerospace Center's Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (Grace) satellites, which track minute changes in Earth's gravity field due to changes in Earth's mass distribution, including ice movement.
The team reconciled the differences between techniques and found them to be in agreement, both for total amount and rate of mass loss, over their data sets' eight-year overlapping period. This validated the data sets, establishing a consistent record of ice mass changes since 1992.
The team found that for each year over the 18-year study, the Greenland ice sheet lost mass faster than it did the year before, by an average of 21.9 gigatonnes a year. In Antarctica, the year-over-year speedup in ice mass lost averaged 14.5 gigatonnes.
"These are two totally independent techniques, so it is a major achievement that the results agree so well," said co-author Isabella Velicogna, also jointly with JPL and UC Irvine. "It demonstrates the tremendous progress that's being made in estimating how much ice the ice sheets are gaining and losing, and in analyzing Grace's time-variable gravity data."
The authors conclude that, if current ice sheet melting rates continue for the next four decades, their cumulative loss could raise sea level by 15 centimeters (5.9 inches) by 2050. When this is added to the predicted sea level contribution of 8 centimeters (3.1 inches) from glacial ice caps and 9 centimeters (3.5 inches) from ocean thermal expansion, total sea level rise could reach 32 centimeters (12.6 inches). While this provides one indication of the potential contribution ice sheets could make to sea level in the coming century, the authors caution that considerable uncertainties remain in estimating future ice loss acceleration.
Study results are published this month in Geophysical Research Letters. Other participating institutions include the Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Research, Utrecht University, The Netherlands; and the National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, Colo.
JPL developed Grace and manages the mission for NASA. The University of Texas Center for Space Research in Austin has overall mission responsibility. GeoForschungsZentrum Potsdam (GFZ), Potsdam, Germany, is responsible for German mission elements.
More on Grace is online at http://www.csr.utexas.edu/grace/ and http://grace.jpl.nasa.gov/ .
JPL is managed for NASA by the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.
Alan Buis 818-354-0474
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
Alan.buis@jpl.nasa.gov
News release: 2011-070
March 8, 2011
NASA Finds Polar Ice Adding More to Rising Seas
The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?r ... e_2011-070
PASADENA, Calif. -- The Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are losing mass at an accelerating pace, according to a new NASA-funded satellite study. The findings of the study -- the longest to date of changes in polar ice sheet mass -- suggest these ice sheets are overtaking ice loss from Earth's mountain glaciers and ice caps to become the dominant contributor to global sea level rise, much sooner than model forecasts have predicted.
The nearly 20-year study reveals that in 2006, a year in which comparable results for mass loss in mountain glaciers and ice caps are available from a separate study conducted using other methods, the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets lost a combined mass of 475 gigatonnes a year on average. That's enough to raise global sea level by an average of 1.3 millimeters (.05 inches) a year. (A gigatonne is one billion metric tons, or more than 2.2 trillion pounds.)
The pace at which the polar ice sheets are losing mass was found to be accelerating rapidly. Each year over the course of the study, the two ice sheets lost a combined average of 36.3 gigatonnes more than they did the year before. In comparison, the 2006 study of mountain glaciers and ice caps estimated their loss at 402 gigatonnes a year on average, with a year-over-year acceleration rate three times smaller than that of the ice sheets.
"That ice sheets will dominate future sea level rise is not surprising -- they hold a lot more ice mass than mountain glaciers," said lead author Eric Rignot, jointly of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., and the University of California, Irvine. "What is surprising is this increased contribution by the ice sheets is already happening. If present trends continue, sea level is likely to be significantly higher than levels projected by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2007. Our study helps reduce uncertainties in near-term projections of sea level rise."
Rignot's team combined nearly two decades (1992-2009) of monthly satellite measurements with advanced regional atmospheric climate model data to examine changes in ice sheet mass and trends in acceleration of ice loss.
The study compared two independent measurement techniques. The first characterized the difference between two sets of data: interferometric synthetic aperture radar data from European, Canadian and Japanese satellites and radio echo soundings, which were used to measure ice exiting the ice sheets; and regional atmospheric climate model data from Utrecht University, The Netherlands, used to quantify ice being added to the ice sheets. The other technique used eight years of data from the NASA/German Aerospace Center's Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (Grace) satellites, which track minute changes in Earth's gravity field due to changes in Earth's mass distribution, including ice movement.
The team reconciled the differences between techniques and found them to be in agreement, both for total amount and rate of mass loss, over their data sets' eight-year overlapping period. This validated the data sets, establishing a consistent record of ice mass changes since 1992.
The team found that for each year over the 18-year study, the Greenland ice sheet lost mass faster than it did the year before, by an average of 21.9 gigatonnes a year. In Antarctica, the year-over-year speedup in ice mass lost averaged 14.5 gigatonnes.
"These are two totally independent techniques, so it is a major achievement that the results agree so well," said co-author Isabella Velicogna, also jointly with JPL and UC Irvine. "It demonstrates the tremendous progress that's being made in estimating how much ice the ice sheets are gaining and losing, and in analyzing Grace's time-variable gravity data."
The authors conclude that, if current ice sheet melting rates continue for the next four decades, their cumulative loss could raise sea level by 15 centimeters (5.9 inches) by 2050. When this is added to the predicted sea level contribution of 8 centimeters (3.1 inches) from glacial ice caps and 9 centimeters (3.5 inches) from ocean thermal expansion, total sea level rise could reach 32 centimeters (12.6 inches). While this provides one indication of the potential contribution ice sheets could make to sea level in the coming century, the authors caution that considerable uncertainties remain in estimating future ice loss acceleration.
Study results are published this month in Geophysical Research Letters. Other participating institutions include the Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Research, Utrecht University, The Netherlands; and the National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, Colo.
JPL developed Grace and manages the mission for NASA. The University of Texas Center for Space Research in Austin has overall mission responsibility. GeoForschungsZentrum Potsdam (GFZ), Potsdam, Germany, is responsible for German mission elements.
More on Grace is online at http://www.csr.utexas.edu/grace/ and http://grace.jpl.nasa.gov/ .
JPL is managed for NASA by the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.
Alan Buis 818-354-0474
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
Alan.buis@jpl.nasa.gov
A good friend of mine is the current Director of Polar Studies at NSF. Shrinking ice pack due to climate change is a fact. Reasons? Here's some weather related information.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/capita ... eathergang
Those of us on the Delaware shore are keenly interested in weather change. Those in the Maldives are watching a piece of paradise dissapear.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/capita ... eathergang
Those of us on the Delaware shore are keenly interested in weather change. Those in the Maldives are watching a piece of paradise dissapear.
When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.
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hawksnestbay
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- Posts: 123
- Joined: Mon Aug 07, 2006 6:22 pm
- Location: America's Hometown
Snowmen march to protest Climate Change...
WASHINGTON, DC—Braving balmy temperatures and sunny skies, millions of scarfless snowmen and snowwomen gathered in cities across the world Tuesday to raise public awareness about the heavy toll global warming is taking on their health and well-being.
According to organizers of marches in Washington, Atlanta, Montreal, Berlin, London, Reykjavik, and Moscow, global warming is the primary cause of the steep reduction in the snowman population throughout the Northern Hemisphere. Demonstrators worldwide called on their governments to take more aggressive steps to reduce the effects of climate change.
Organizers estimated the crowd at more than 375,000, but D.C. Police Commissioner Charles Stacey estimated turnout at 30,000 whole snowmen, with scattered rounded abdomens accounting for an additional 5,000. Atlanta organizers and police agree that all demonstrators had melted by 11 a.m.
Larry Chilly speaks out against mankind's global irresponsibility.
Joe Centigrade, president of the Advocates For Beings Of Frozen Precipitation, spoke at a mass rally Tuesday on Washington's National Mall.
"The unseasonably warm winters of the recent past are a clear indication of a real environmental threat to humans and their frozen simulacra," said Centigrade, his coals arranged in a frowning pattern. "As snowmen and snowwomen, we accept the inevitability of melting, but the actions of man are causing us to evaporate well before our time."
Speakers at the Washington rally included a Chicago snowwoman who had lost three snowchildren to warm temperatures, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, and Larry Chilly, formerly a 6-foot-tall, triple-segmented Muncie, IN snowman, who had been reduced to a slushy head.
Centigrade told the slowly melting snowcrowd that as recently as 15 years ago, the average life span of a snowperson built in late December was three weeks to a month. Today, that same snowperson has an average life span of two weeks.
Centigrade also recounted stories of once-jolly snowmen unable to keep their carrot noses in their fast-melting faces, and of others who were made of only two undersize segments.
"In many regions of New England today, there's not even enough snow on the ground to make snowballs, much less a torso," Centigrade said. "Instead, some snowmen are stuck together with slush and leaves rather than pure, white snow. We must take steps now to end their suffering."
Bearing signs with such slogans as "You Can't Build A Snowman With Rain" and "Winter = Life," the crystalline-ice protestors, many of whom had chartered refrigerated tractor-trailers and ice-cream trucks to travel to the mass protest, complained that popular stereotypes about snowmen obscure and trivialize the crisis.
"Humans sneer at us, 'If you want to stay intact, go to the North Pole and live with Santa,'" said Susie Flakeman, a Thunder Bay, Ontario snowwoman waiting in line with hundreds of others to use a Porta-Freezer. "But less than one-half of 1 percent of us ever receive that honor. Most of us end up victims of the scourge that almost killed Frosty: man-made climate change."
The protest was largely peaceful, disrupted only by a disturbing incident in which one distraught snowman hurled himself into the reflecting pool of the National Mall. He suffered third-degree slush on over 90 percent of his body before rescuers could recover him. He was rushed to a local meat locker where he was pronounced melted on arrival.Some scientists refuted the snowbeings' claims regarding global warming.
"Throughout history, the earth has endured periods of temperature fluctuation," said Dr. Harley Morrison, a biochemist who has advised President Bush on scientific issues. "Also, there have already been several major blizzards throughout North America this season alone. I made a snowman myself, and he lasted for several weeks."
Late word arrived Tuesday evening that the Moscow protest was violently dispersed by riot police bearing hot-water hoses and snow blowers. Moscow officials said the snowmen were illegally blocking pedestrian traffic near the Kremlin and causing people to slip and fall in their slushy wakes. Snow leaders, including Centigrade, condemned the crackdown.
"Those of us who remember the Icelandic anti-heated-sidewalk riots of the 1980s know that the powers that be despise and fear snowmen who fight for their rights," Centigrade said. "They'd rather kill the messengers than face the fact that our ecosystems are changing irreparably. We're prepared to stay in D.C. as long as it takes until Congress agrees to listen to our demands."
Before he could conclude his remarks, Centigrade's face slid off.
According to organizers of marches in Washington, Atlanta, Montreal, Berlin, London, Reykjavik, and Moscow, global warming is the primary cause of the steep reduction in the snowman population throughout the Northern Hemisphere. Demonstrators worldwide called on their governments to take more aggressive steps to reduce the effects of climate change.
Organizers estimated the crowd at more than 375,000, but D.C. Police Commissioner Charles Stacey estimated turnout at 30,000 whole snowmen, with scattered rounded abdomens accounting for an additional 5,000. Atlanta organizers and police agree that all demonstrators had melted by 11 a.m.
Larry Chilly speaks out against mankind's global irresponsibility.
Joe Centigrade, president of the Advocates For Beings Of Frozen Precipitation, spoke at a mass rally Tuesday on Washington's National Mall.
"The unseasonably warm winters of the recent past are a clear indication of a real environmental threat to humans and their frozen simulacra," said Centigrade, his coals arranged in a frowning pattern. "As snowmen and snowwomen, we accept the inevitability of melting, but the actions of man are causing us to evaporate well before our time."
Speakers at the Washington rally included a Chicago snowwoman who had lost three snowchildren to warm temperatures, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, and Larry Chilly, formerly a 6-foot-tall, triple-segmented Muncie, IN snowman, who had been reduced to a slushy head.
Centigrade told the slowly melting snowcrowd that as recently as 15 years ago, the average life span of a snowperson built in late December was three weeks to a month. Today, that same snowperson has an average life span of two weeks.
Centigrade also recounted stories of once-jolly snowmen unable to keep their carrot noses in their fast-melting faces, and of others who were made of only two undersize segments.
"In many regions of New England today, there's not even enough snow on the ground to make snowballs, much less a torso," Centigrade said. "Instead, some snowmen are stuck together with slush and leaves rather than pure, white snow. We must take steps now to end their suffering."
Bearing signs with such slogans as "You Can't Build A Snowman With Rain" and "Winter = Life," the crystalline-ice protestors, many of whom had chartered refrigerated tractor-trailers and ice-cream trucks to travel to the mass protest, complained that popular stereotypes about snowmen obscure and trivialize the crisis.
"Humans sneer at us, 'If you want to stay intact, go to the North Pole and live with Santa,'" said Susie Flakeman, a Thunder Bay, Ontario snowwoman waiting in line with hundreds of others to use a Porta-Freezer. "But less than one-half of 1 percent of us ever receive that honor. Most of us end up victims of the scourge that almost killed Frosty: man-made climate change."
The protest was largely peaceful, disrupted only by a disturbing incident in which one distraught snowman hurled himself into the reflecting pool of the National Mall. He suffered third-degree slush on over 90 percent of his body before rescuers could recover him. He was rushed to a local meat locker where he was pronounced melted on arrival.Some scientists refuted the snowbeings' claims regarding global warming.
"Throughout history, the earth has endured periods of temperature fluctuation," said Dr. Harley Morrison, a biochemist who has advised President Bush on scientific issues. "Also, there have already been several major blizzards throughout North America this season alone. I made a snowman myself, and he lasted for several weeks."
Late word arrived Tuesday evening that the Moscow protest was violently dispersed by riot police bearing hot-water hoses and snow blowers. Moscow officials said the snowmen were illegally blocking pedestrian traffic near the Kremlin and causing people to slip and fall in their slushy wakes. Snow leaders, including Centigrade, condemned the crackdown.
"Those of us who remember the Icelandic anti-heated-sidewalk riots of the 1980s know that the powers that be despise and fear snowmen who fight for their rights," Centigrade said. "They'd rather kill the messengers than face the fact that our ecosystems are changing irreparably. We're prepared to stay in D.C. as long as it takes until Congress agrees to listen to our demands."
Before he could conclude his remarks, Centigrade's face slid off.
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GraysonDave
- Posts: 479
- Joined: Thu Feb 11, 2010 7:41 am
- Location: Georgia
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early ... ce.1200109
That surface loss of ice may be made up by ice forming from below. I just read the abstract, not the entire report.
An International Polar Year aerogeophysical investigation of the high interior of East Antarctica reveals widespread freeze-on that drives significant mass redistribution at the bottom of the ice sheet. While surface accumulation of snow remains the primary mechanism for ice sheet growth, beneath Dome A 24% of the base by area is frozen-on ice. In some places, up to half the ice thickness has been added from below. These ice packages result from conductive cooling of water ponded near the Gamburtsev Subglacial Mountain ridges and supercooling of water forced up steep valley walls. Persistent freeze-on thickens the ice column, alters basal ice rheology and fabric and upwarps the overlying ice sheet, including the oldest atmospheric climate archive, and drives flow behavior not captured in present models.
That surface loss of ice may be made up by ice forming from below. I just read the abstract, not the entire report.
An International Polar Year aerogeophysical investigation of the high interior of East Antarctica reveals widespread freeze-on that drives significant mass redistribution at the bottom of the ice sheet. While surface accumulation of snow remains the primary mechanism for ice sheet growth, beneath Dome A 24% of the base by area is frozen-on ice. In some places, up to half the ice thickness has been added from below. These ice packages result from conductive cooling of water ponded near the Gamburtsev Subglacial Mountain ridges and supercooling of water forced up steep valley walls. Persistent freeze-on thickens the ice column, alters basal ice rheology and fabric and upwarps the overlying ice sheet, including the oldest atmospheric climate archive, and drives flow behavior not captured in present models.
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California Girl
Re: Snowmen march to protest Climate Change...
OMG! This is hilarious!! I'm dying laughing! 
hawksnestbay wrote:... and Larry Chilly, formerly a 6-foot-tall, triple-segmented Muncie, IN snowman, who had been reduced to a slushy head.
... Before he could conclude his remarks, Centigrade's face slid off.
Last bumped by Anonymous on Tue Jul 18, 2023 1:34 am.