Greenland lost a TRILLION tons of ice in four years.....that's a trillion, with a 'T'

[LongTomH]

From Phil Plait's excellent blog: Greenland is still melting away:

A new paper just published by scientists in Geophysical Research Letters presents results of their investigation into the ice sheet covering Greenland. They found that over the four-year period from Jan. 1, 2011 to Dec. 31, 2014 Greenland lost over a trillion tons of ice.

............//snip

These results, using the Cryosat-2 satellite, actually matches pretty well with other measurements made using different methods; for example, using data from the GRACE satellites scientists found Greenland loses ice at a rate of about 287 billion tons per year.

These numbers are staggering. To give you a sense of scale: A trillion tons of ice would make a cube over 10 kilometers (six miles) on a side. That’s taller than Mt. Everest, and would have about three times that mountain’s volume. And that much ice disappeared from Greenland in just four years.

But no, really, it didn’t disappear. It had to go somewhere. And where it went was into the ocean, adding water to it. Distributed over the Earth, that means sea level rose about 2.5 mm over those four years. That rate of sea level rise from Greenland ice melting was twice as rapid as the average rate from 1992-2011. I’ll note that 2012 was unusual across the Arctic, with far more warming than usual, less snow cover than usual, huge sea ice losses, and higher loss of Greenland land ice as well. But even with that, the trend is, dare I say, alarming.

The rest of Phil's article deals with the effects of this melting; sea level rise, plus a possible disruption of the mechanism that transports heat from the equator to the poles.

[longship]

1. The BadAstronomer is getting it right.

He's not afraid to get political.

R&

[blm]

2. jeeez

.

[TreasonousBastard]

3. However, if the mechanism moving warm water from the tropics is...

seriously disrupted, the Gulf Stream could reverse.

And we get another Ice Age, with several billion people seeing their homes, businesses, and food sources sitting on glaciers.

[tonyt53]

5. Yep, and that's why it is climate change instead of global warming.

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

7. Overstated. If we get another ice age, ...

... then your "several billion people" estimate is highly optimistic.

The population drop would be precipitous. And frightening, ruthless, etc, etc.

[NickB79]

9. Even a slowdown of the Gulf Stream won't initiate an ice age at this point

At best, it will make some areas of the planet less brutal than others:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/07/160711100940.htm

As the world warms, melting icecaps and increased rainfall are widely predicted to slow this process down by flooding oceans with cold freshwater.

Some experts even fear that the process could shut down altogether, plunging Europe into a new ice age.

However, a new study by the University of Sussex, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México and the University of California, Berkeley finds that, rather than cooling Europe, a slowdown of the Thermohaline Circulation would mean the continent still warms, but less quickly than other parts of the world.

This would lead to a rise in welfare in Europe, concludes the research, which is published in the leading economics journal the American Economic Review.

[Rex]

10. Did we learn nothing from defrosting our freezers? I kid.

Yeah elevated sea levels will be the last thing people will need to worry about in a new Ice Age.

[VMA131Marine]

4. I read Bad Astronomy every day and I'm usually on Phil's side but ...

I think today's Greenland post was lacking some needed context.

Greenland is losing a ice equivalent to a cube 10 km on a side; that is 1,000 cubic km. Greenland contains nearly 3,000,000 cubic km of ice so even at this rate of loss it would take thousands of years for it all to melt. On the other hand, if it did all melt sea level would rise by over 7 meters (24 feet) and the evidence is that the melt rate is accelerating.

[lpbk2713]

6. Their habitat is shrinking around them.

[yodermon]

8. "2.5 mm sea level rise? That's nothing! Puny!"

get ready

[mopinko]

11. not mm. cm.