September 23, 2016
Rapidly melting Greenland (click here) may be shedding its ice even faster than anyone suspected, new research suggests.
A study just out in the journal Science Advances finds that previous studies may have underestimated the current rate of mass loss on the Greenland ice sheet by about 18 billion tonnes per year.
Generally, scientists estimate ice loss in Greenland (and elsewhere around the world) using data from satellites. But the new study suggests these satellite studies may have included some incorrect assumptions, causing them to miscalculate the amount of mass actually disappearing from the ice sheet each year.
The assertion revolves around a concept known as "glacial isostatic adjustment", or the tendency of land to bounce back after a large weight of ice has been removed from it. Over the past 25,000 years, since the last great Ice Age, the planet's surface has been slowly springing back into place....
Ice is ice is ice is ice. It melts at below 0 degrees Celsius or below 32 degrees Fahrenheit.
Melting ice is like peeling back an onion. When one layer is gone the next layer is exposed to heat. And before you know it the ice is no more.
