Greenland Ice Cap Now Losing Mass Equal To All Alps' Glaciers Annually - Winter Temps Up 5C, Fall 3C

[hatrack]

EDIT

Over the last 30 years, its melt zone has expanded by 30 percent, and now the cap loses 100 to 150 cubic km of ice every year - more than all the ice in the Alps. "Some people are scared to discover the process is running faster than the models," said Konrad Steffen, a glaciologist at University of Colorado at Boulder and a Greenland expert who serves on a U.S. government advisory committee on abrupt climate change.

In the past 15 years, winter temperatures have risen about 5 degrees Celsius on the cap, while spring and autumn temperatures increased about 3 degrees Celsius. Summer temperatures are unchanged.

Swiss-born Steffen is one of dozens of scientists who have peppered the Greenland ice cap with instruments to measure temperature, snowfall and the movement, thickness and melting of the ice. Since 1990, Steffen has spent two months a year at Swiss Camp, a wind-swept outpost of tents on the ice cap, where he and other researchers brave temperatures of minus 30 Celsius to scrutinise Greenland's climate change clues.

The more the surface melts, the faster the ice sheet moves towards the ocean. The glacier Swiss Camp rests on has doubled its speed to about 15 km a year in the last 12 years, just as its tongue retreated 10 km into the fjord. "It is scary," said Steffen. "This is only Greenland. But Antarctica and glaciers around the world are responding as well."

EDIT

http://in.today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=entertainmentNews&storyID=2007-06-06T144517Z_01_NOOTR_RTRJONC_0_India-301714-1.xml

[Nihil]

1. Kick for the last paragraph

> The more the surface melts, the faster the ice sheet moves towards the
> ocean. The glacier Swiss Camp rests on has doubled its speed to about
> 15 km a year in the last 12 years, just as its tongue retreated 10 km
> into the fjord. "It is scary," said Steffen. "This is only Greenland.
> But Antarctica and glaciers around the world are responding as well."

[Systematic Chaos]

2. Anyone who has read some of my other posts on these topics

will probably agree with me that for my own sanity I need to stay away from these subjects for a bit. God DAMN this scares me. :(

[Delphinus]

3. Then you'll,

for sure, NOT want to read the one about giving serious consideration to cutting emissions by the year 2050.

[hatrack]

4. But they're talking about "serious" consideration! SERIOUS!!!

Don't you see?!? It's different this time.

No, seriously!

:rofl:

[Nihil]

5. It has got to the point where I really want this to happen tomorrow.

I want the people whose greed and wilful destruction of the planet to
suffer now, not live out their pampered lives in luxury.

I want them to feel the pain that they were planning to pass on to
their grandchildren.

I want the crisis to hit tomorrow with a world-shattering realisation,
not gradually over decades of "debate", "studies" and "initiatives".

I want to be there when my children need me, not just be remembered
as a lonely figure trying to do the right thing surrounded by the
generations of "me me me" who trashed the world.

I have given up hope of there being any justice in the world but,
if there was, the only thing I would ask would be that the next
twenty years are compressed into twenty days.