New study slashes estimate of icecap loss

[phantom power]

When the glaciers started to retreat around 20,000 years ago, the crust started to rebound, and is still doing so.

This movement, though, is not just a single vertical motion, lead researcher Bert Vermeersen of Delft Technical University, in the Netherlands, said in phone interview with AFP.

...

These revealed, among other things, that southern Greenland is in fact subsiding, as the crust beneath it is pulled by the post-glacial rebound from northern America.

With glacial isostatic adjustment modelled in, the loss from Greenland is put at 104 gigatonnes, plus or minus 23 gigatonnes, and 64 gigatonnes from West Antarctica, plus or minus 32 gigatonnes.

...

"The corrections for deformations of the Earth's crust have a considerable effect on the amount of ice that is estimated to be melting each year," said Vermeersen, whose team worked with NASA's Jet Propulsation Laboratory and the Netherlands Institute for Space Research.

"We have concluded that the Greenland and West Antarctica ice caps are melting at approximately half the speed originally predicted."

http://www.physorg.com/news203066251.html

[XemaSab]

1. Slower than expected

:P

[Better Today]

2. Sorry, when estimates contain an error of margin of 50%, I can't take them seriously.

[Psephos]

5. Sorry, when posts contain a transposition error, I can't take them seriously. ;)

J.K.! I couldn't resist. :)

[n2doc]

3. Well, good news

And frankly, I have no problems with studies that correct previous ones, so long as they pass the peer review test and stand up to further studies. That's the scientific process, folks. Our understanding of the Earth changes as we study it more.

[kristopher]

4. +1

[joshcryer]

6. The original studies did have pretty dang high error bars, though.