Polar ice loss quickens, raising seas
Damn: bbc.co.uk
Climate change deniers always blather about the models being inaccurate, and in this case, they were - underestimating the consequences of AGW. Funny how we never hear talk about the consequences of ignoring that possibility.Ice loss from Antarctica and Greenland has accelerated over the last 20 years, research shows, and will soon become the biggest driver of sea level rise…Writing in Geophysical Research Letters, the team says ice loss here is speeding up faster than models predict.
That’s 39 years from now. Have kids? Are you around 50 years old yourself, or younger?If these increases persist, water from the two polar ice sheets could have added 15cm (5.9 inches) to the average global sea level by 2050.
Yet the GOP is more than happy to gut funding for NASA’s climate change research. Even though it’s happening now, faster than expected, and jeopardizing America’s national security.The second dataset comes from Nasa’s Grace mission, which uses twin satellites to measure variations in the Earth’s gravitational pull…Ice loss causes a fractional reduction in gravity at that point on the Earth’s surface.
This is why humanity can’t have nice things.
UPDATE: turns out rising seas and flooding aren’t the only consequences from melting glaciers: Retreating Glaciers Spur Alaskan Earthquakes
As glaciers melt they lighten the load on the Earth’s crust. Tectonic plates, that are mobile pieces of the Earth’s crust, can then move more freely…The weight of a large glacier on top of these active earthquake areas can help keep things stable. But, as the glaciers melt and their load on the plate lessens, there is a greater likelihood of an earthquake happening to relieve the large strain underneath.