Anyone got any stuff on the variable melting rates of the Greenland glaciers?
Answer:
If Kalaiit Nunat is going down the slide-(global warming) the variable rate will change by the second, and it's been going faster every year for century's, I'm one of the people up there watching the whole thing change so fast that i CANNOT LIVE in the polluted arctic, the air is yellow,brown and black,the arctic glacier's, will be gone very soon, before you are middle aged, if you are college age. So why should you mathematically figure out what is irrelevant, when humanity and our blue planet may not survive extreme change. Think of your survival now.
try this not sure if its what you want but i tried :)
http://www.sciencedaily.com/upi/index.ph...
Estimated monthly changes in the mass of Greenland's ice sheet suggest it is melting at a rate of about 239 cubic kilometres (57.3 cubic miles) per year.
Yup. I assume you're referring to the finding that the ice caps are melting ahead of schedule, speeding up global warming? There are a lot of articles in "popular" news about it, and these articles quote various supporters, critics, etc. about the issue. I am including a few links.
http://www.canadafreepress.com/2007/glob... (describes issue)
http://www.heartland.org/article.cfm?art... (critical)
http://www.canadafreepress.com/2007/glob... (policy responses)
You probably won't find many scholarly articles, because the science article is new. It will probably take a couple of academic "cycles" -- a month or two minimum -- to get academics' responses. You do get some responses on this google scholar search: http://scholar.google.com/scholar?as_q=e...
Apparently 2007 has not been as interesting as previous years regarding melting rates. The links below should help, but know that things have slowed down for the moment.
How much, and how fast?
Virtually everyone agrees that the complete disappearance of the 2-mile-thick (3-kilometer-thick) Greenland Ice Sheet would cause an estimated 23-foot (7-meter) rise in global sea levels. That would inundate coastal regions around the world. At the same time, virtually everyone also agrees that even under the worst-case scenario, it would take centuries of warmer weather for Greenland's ice to disappear completely.
It's the rate of change in the ice sheet, and its variability over time, that is at issue.
Rignot and Kanagaratnam say their calculations indicate that the Greenland melt currently contributes about two-hundredths of an inch (0.5 millimeters) to the annual 0.12-inch (3-millimeter) rise in global sea levels. The glacier speed-up is responsible for more than two-thirds of that contribution, they say.
This is from psyorg.com: The world's fastest glacier, Greenland's Jakobshavn Isbrae, doubled its speed between 1997 and 2003. The rapid movement of ice from land into the sea provides key evidence of newly discovered relationships between ice sheets, sea level rise and climate warming.
The glacier's sudden speed-up also coincides with very rapid thinning, up to 49 feet of ice per year after 1997, according to research published in the Dec. 2 issue of the journal Nature. Along with increased rates of ice flow and thinning, the thick ice that extends from the mouth of the glacier into the ocean, called the ice tongue, began retreating in 2000, breaking up almost completely by May 2003.
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