My italics added thoughout. You will note that Edgar Cayce 70 years ago predicted that Europe would turn cold “in the twinkling of an eye” — at a time when no one on earth had a clue about global warming or its possible effect on the thermo-haline cycle. This article via the same friend who provided the URLs showing melt in the Arctic.
Meltwater stream in the ablation zone (area below the equilibrium line) of the Greenland ice sheet.(Photo by Roger J. Braithwaite courtesy NASA)
Greenland’s Ice Melt Accelerating
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/sep2006/2006-09-21-01.asp
BOULDER, Colorado, September 21, 2006 (ENS) - Greenland’s ice sheet is melting faster than previously thought, according to research published Wednesday by U.S. scientists. The data shows the rate of loss accelerated from 2004 to 2006, with the massive ice sheet melting two and one-half times faster than the previous two-year period.
Analysis of satellite observations show that Greenland lost roughly 164 cubic miles of ice from April 2004 to April 2006 - more than the volume of water in Lake Erie .
The findings are consistent with earlier results showing increased melting due to rising temperatures blamed on global warming, the researchers said.
The new data comes on the heels of several that show global warming is melting perennial sea ice in the Arctic Ocean. But unlike sea ice, the melting of the Greenland ice sheet has the potentially to dramatically affect sea levels.
Greenland harbors about 10 percent of the world’s freshwater in its ice sheet, which is up to two miles thick in places. Scientists estimate that if the Greenland ice sheet melted completely, the world’s oceans would rise more than 20 feet.
The new study was published in the current issue of the journal “Nature” by researchers with the University of Colorado at Boulder (CU-Boulder).
It comes in the wake of a study published last month in the journal “Science” that showed Greenland lost 57 cubic miles of ice annually from 2002 to 2005.
The new study indicates the speed-up in ice mass loss charted by the researchers has been occurring primarily in southern Greenland.
“The acceleration rate really took off in 2004,” said Isabella Velicogna, a researcher at the CU-Boulder-based Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences. “We think the changes we are seeing are probably a pretty good indicator of the changing climatic conditions in Greenland, particularly in the southern region.”
The findings echo earlier studies by several research groups that indicate increased melting has occurred as temperatures in southern Greenland have risen by about 4.4 degrees Fahrenheit in the past two decades.
Significant ice loss in Greenland has the potential to have severe effects on the climate of the Northern Hemisphere, said Velicogna, who also is affiliated with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
Scientists believe that large amounts of freshwater purged from Greenland’s eastern coast could help to weaken the counterclockwise flow of the North Atlantic Current, lowering water and wind temperatures and potentially triggering abrupt cooling events in northern Europe.
The CU-Boulder findings also are consistent with studies charting a dramatic acceleration of glaciers in southeast Greenland, the researchers said.
A 2006 study by researchers at the University of Wales showed the two glaciers have doubled their speed and are dumping twice as much ice into the sea as they did five years ago.
“Our results correlate well with independent observations of glacier acceleration in the south of Greenland,” said coauthor John Wahr, also a professor of physics at CU-Boulder. “It’s a fairly straightforward story - the ice loss in Greenland increased dramatically in 2004, particularly in the south, and it is continuing.”
The observations for the study were recorded by the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellites. Launched in 2002 by NASA and Germany, the two GRACE satellites rotate around Earth 16 times a day at an altitude of 310 miles, sensing subtle variations in Earth’s mass and gravitational pull. Separated by 137 miles, the satellites measure changes in Earth’s gravity field caused by regional changes in the planet’s mass, including ice sheets, oceans and water stored in the soil and in underground aquifers.
In March 2006, Velicogna and Wahr used the two satellites to determine that the Antarctic ice sheet, which holds 70 percent of Earth’s freshwater, lost up to 36 cubic miles of ice annually from April 2002 to August 2005.