Melting ice sheets largest contributor to rising sea levels
Jeremy Hancemongabay.com
March 08, 2011
"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," said lead author Eric Rignot, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the University of California, Irvine. "Our study helps reduce uncertainties in near-term projections of sea level rise."
Unfortunately the study points to a greater, not lesser, sea level rise in the near-term than often predicted. By 2050, sea level could rise by over a foot (32 centimeters) with ice sheet melt contributing almost half to that expansion to 5.9 inches (15 centimeters).
The study, which covers 18 years of data, also found that ice sheet melt has been accelerating. On average Greenland lost an additional 21.9 gigatonnes every year, while Antarctica averaged 14.5 gigatonnes annually. While global temperatures have been rising significantly, regional temperatures in the Arctic and Antarctic have risen even faster in part due to what scientists call the 'ice-aldebo feedback', which means melting ice exposes surfaces, such as water or tundra, that reflect less solar radiation than ice and thereby warm more.
CITATION: E. Rignot, I. Velicogna, M. R. van den Broeke, A. Monaghan, J. Lenaerts. Acceleration of the contribution of the Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheets to sea level rise. Geophysical Research Letters. VOL. 38, L05503, 5 PP., 2011 doi:10.1029/2011GL046583.
Store glacier in West Greenland. Photo by: Eric Rignot.
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