Reuters: Greenland ice sheet shrinking (not as) fast (as thought): NASA

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=scienceNews&storyid=2006-10-20T040932Z_01_N19397848_RTRUKOC_0_US-ENVIRONMENT-GREENLAND.xml

Greenland ice sheet shrinking fast: NASA

Fri Oct 20, 2006 12:09 AM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The vast sheet of ice that covers Greenland is shrinking fast, but still not as fast as previous research indicated, NASA scientists said on Thursday.

Greenland's low coastal regions lost 155 gigatons (41 cubic miles) of ice each year between 2003 and 2005 from excess melting and icebergs, the scientists said in a statement.

The high-elevation interior gained 54 gigatons (14 cubic miles) annually from excess snowfall, they said.

This is a change from the 1990s, when ice gains approximately equaled losses, said Scott Luthcke of NASA's Planetary Geodynamics Laboratory outside Washington.

"That situation has now changed significantly, with an annual net loss of ice equal to nearly six years of average water flow from the Colorado River," Luthcke said.

Luthcke and his team reported their findings in Science Express, the advance edition of the journal Science.

The ice mass loss in this study is less than half that reported in other recent research, NASA said in a statement, but it still shows that Greenland is losing 20 percent more mass than it gets in new snowfall each year.

...

More information is available online at http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/lookingatearth/greenland_slide.html

[stop the bleeding]

1. year over year is still at a 20% loss rate

how about those Hummers

[OKIsItJustMe]

3. It's not losing 20%/year

It's losing 20% more than it's gaining. Let's say you had a pet glacier in your back yard. In the 1990's, it would gain a pound each Winter, and lose a pound each Summer. Now, it's gaining a pound each Winter and losing 1.2 pounds each Summer.

Obviously your pet glacier cannot keep this up indefinitely, but we never discussed how much it weighed to begin with.

[stop the bleeding]

4. cool

no pun intended - thank you


on edit: I think I am the dumbest person on DU - I always screw up the threads with my "thoughts"

[Delphinus]

5. No, don't say that!

I think I am the dumbest person on DU - I always screw up the threads with my "thoughts"

Don't stop posting your thoughts - your saying what you did, brought a further explanation, which sorted things out for more than just you. :hi:

[TechBear_Seattle]

2. Now is the time to buy Greenlandic acrage on spec

Buy up land currently covered with glacier for pennies, then wait a decade or two for the ice to melt. As people flee from hotter regions of the warming earth, your land will be a gold mine (maybe literally so, if the mineral rights work out.)

[zreosumgame]

6. ah, more NASA 'faith-based' 'science' eh?

I wonder which dumbaya cablist used the white-out on the photos?

[Up2Late]

7. "...155 gigatons...?" Is gigatons a real word, or are...

...the "raised with Computers...," young Scientists beginning to coin new words?

[shadowknows69]

8. An extra 5 years until Waterworld?

n/t