Scientists: Greenland Ice in Trouble
Scientists said on Sunday that they can no longer rule out ‘a fast-track melting of the Greenland icesheet — a prospect, once the preserve of doomsayers, that would see much of the world’s coastline drowned by rising seas.‘
The researchers found that the great Laurentide icesheet which smothered much of North America during the last Ice Age melted far swifter than realised, dumping billions of tonnes of water into the ocean.
The discovery raises worrying questions about the future stability of Greenland’s icesheet, for the Laurentide melt occurred thanks to a spurt of warming that could be mirrored once more by the end of this century, they said.
“The word ‘glacial’ used to imply that something was very slow,” said climate researcher Allegra LeGrande of New York’s Columbia University.
“This new evidence from the past, paired with our model for predicting future climate, indicates that ‘glacial’ is anything but slow. Past icesheets responded quickly to a changing climate, hinting at the potential for a similar response in the future.”
The research of the scientists was published online by the journal Nature Geoscience.
In a commentary, also published in Nature Geoscience, Earth scientists Mark Siddall and Michael Kaplan said Greenland’s glacial slab was entering into a temperature range at which it was becoming “particularly vulnerable.”
“[The new] work suggests that future reductions of the Greenland ice sheet on the order of one metre (3.25 feet) per century are not out of the question,” they said.
It will be interesting to see the reaction of other scientists to this research. Keeping an eye on it.
Let us see if I have this right. Discovering that at the end of an Ice Age, a glacier melted faster than their *computor models* had previously suggested is related to this alleged global warming how? Perhaps I am confused, is not the end of an Ice age the appropriate time for the ice to melt? This could only be a problem if there actually was such a thing as AGW. And since there are demonstrable periods of both warming and cooling long before the Industrial Age (few Hummers noted in the Middle ages) perhaps this also means nothing. I also note the weasel wording " can no longer rule out" , "not out of the question". Let’s get real. A computor model is a prediction-it is no more than that. IF the temperature rises again, and IF it rises very far and fast, "we can not rule out the possibility that something may happen…". Good to know, add to that fire hot, water wet.Since we have seen global cooling in the last ten years greater than the alleged warming recorded in the last century-with much better instrumentation if not better interpretation, perhaps it is time to run up the ’70s Ice Ages are coming- songand panic instead. I suggest links to the study would allow some serious commentary.
Randall, you are right that you are confused, but that is ok of course because understanding of a complex issue like global warming can be confusing. The significance of the melting of the Laurentide Glacier is that it illustrates through the computer models–which are based on extensive scientific research by the way–that the glacier melted very quickly back at the end of the ice age ten thousand years ago. This means that it is very possibly that the melting of the Greenland ice sheet could also happen very quickly in the present which appears to be what is happening right now.
Of course there are variations in temperature which are natural, but when all of those have been ruled out through dilgent research what scientists find is left is that humans are causing this present warming.
One of the tools that scientists use to assess past climatic change are ice cores which can be used to determine atmosphere gas levels like carbon dioxide and other things. This can all become very complicated very quickly, but after studying this issue for twenty years myself I am convinced that global warming is real. And we are fast running out of time. Scientists also do extensive study of radio isotope levels which help to confirm their models which sometimes show climatic trends that they had not anticapated. Watch An Inconvienent Truth, by Al Gore he makes alot of good points which had have been throughly verified by research scientists.