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Greenland's Melting Ice Sheet May Speed Rise in Sea Level
By Juliet Eilperin
The Washington Post
Friday 11 August 2006
Study finds no boost in Antarctic snowfall
to mitigate problem.
Two new scientific studies measuring Greenland's rapidly melting ice sheet
and the pace of Antarctic snowfall suggest that the sea level may be rising
faster than researchers previously assumed.
The papers, both published yesterday in the journal Science, provide the latest
evidence of how climate change is transforming the global landscape. University
of Texas at Austin researchers, using twin satellites, determined that the Greenland
ice sheet, Earth's second-largest reservoir of fresh water, is melting at three
times the rate at which it had been melting over the previous five years. A
separate study by 16 international scientists concluded that Antarctic snowfall
accumulation has remained steady over the past 50 years, with no increases that
might have mitigated the melting of the ice shelf, as some researchers had assumed
would occur.
Taken together, the two reports indicate that global sea level rise may increase
more rapidly in the coming years, though the Greenland study is based on only
2 1/2 years of data. The melting of 57 cubic miles a year from Greenland's ice
sheet could add 0.6 millimeters alone, which is higher than any previously published
measurement for Greenland, according to University of Texas Center for Space
Research scientist Jianli Chen.
"It's a very big number," Chen said, noting that for at least a hundred
years the sea level has increased an average of 1.8 millimeters annually.
Byron Tapley, one of Chen's co-authors, said the ice loss along the sheet's
eastern shoreline is particularly significant because it could help weaken the
counterclockwise flow of the North Atlantic Current. The more buoyant fresh
water from the ice melt could lower water temperatures and ultimately make Western
European winters colder, he said.
"If enough fresh water enters the Norwegian Current and you interrupt
return flow, then there could be climate effects in Europe," Tapley said.
But Myron Ebell, director of energy and global warming policy at the libertarian
Competitive Enterprise Institute, questioned why scientists are drawing broad
conclusions from data covering such a short time span.
"We now have 'the sky is falling down' on the basis of a few years of
data," said Ebell, whose group is partly funded by the fossil-fuel industry.
The second paper, written by 16 scientists from seven countries, challenges
computer projections that higher temperatures in the southernmost continent
will spur greater snowfall accumulation and compensate for the world's melting
ice sheets. Using satellite data that looked at both the West and East Antarctic
ice sheets, the researchers concluded there has been no real increase in precipitation
in the region in the past five decades.
Andrew J. Monaghan, a meteorologist at Ohio State University's Byrd Polar Research
Center, said in an interview that his findings suggest the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change's 2001 prediction that Antarctic snowfall would increase
15 to 20 percent by the end of the century may not be borne out. Some researchers
had hoped increased snowfall in the region would thicken the Antarctic ice sheets
and help counterbalance any future melt.
"It's a much more complex situation than assuming a temperature rise is
going to lead to a commensurate increase in precipitation," Monaghan said.
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