“The amount of ice lost by Greenland over the last year is the equivalent of two times all the ice in the Alps, or a layer of water more than one-half mile deep covering Washington DC,” said Konrad Steffen of the University of Colorado at Boulder.
Using satellite data, Steffen and his colleagues have monitored the rapid thinning of ice, which was 10 percent greater than the previous record year in 2005.
If all the ice in Greenland melted, about one-twentieth of the world’s total, the sea level would rise by 6.4 meters globally.
According to a National Snow and Ice Center report in May, the Arctic ice cap was melting much faster than predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and was now about 30 years ahead of IPCC forecast. Read more…
Is melting ice the world’s foremost problem? Read more…
Related Links:
- Only Zero Emissions Would Avert Dangerous Warming
- UN Expert: 50 Million Could be Displaced by Climate Change by 2010
- Stern Report: “a great toxic dump of doublespeak in truly Orwellian fashion”
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Fire Earth 