Global Warming Rising Sea
The real danger of global warming is not that there will be atypical freezes during some years. It’s that the polar and arctic areas are getting warming, which released more water, which affects global sea levels, which affects the amound of land which can sequester CO2 to ameliorate global warming. Once the cycle starts, the solution will be much more difficult.
The majority of the 1-2mm/year increase in sea level is attributable to thermal expansion, rather than inflow of melt water from glaciers. This is somewhat uncertain since getting a good measure of global sea level is difficult and it takes several decades of data to spot a trend. Floating ice has only a very minor effect on sea level due to the solution of fresh water into salt on melting. Only landbound ice can affect sealevel in a significant way.
My greatest fear is that the rise in temperatures http://www.epa.gov/globalwarming/news/ over the next 20-30 years will trigger a melting of the Greenland icesheet.
Studies have shown that the WAIS is much more stable than previously thought, but this points to the rise in sea level in the last interglacial being due to melting of Greenland instead. The continent is much closer to the equator than the WAIS and thus more affected by GW, as well as being in the area of greatest warming.
http://www.nature.com/nsu/000406/000406-9.html
It should be appreciated that much of the stability of the Greenland Ice Sheet is due to the height of the mass, which causes winds being force over it into adiabatic cooling and thus snow precipitation. If the height of the ice sheet is reduced by a few hundred meters by melting, the process will start a positive feedback as snowfall accumulation is reduced, which can lead to *relatively* rapid collapse. A decade? A hundred years? A millenia?
Regardless of the rate, the amount of the rise is staggering. Six to seven meters of rise over say 300 years would be .mean two meters rise in 2100, and a one meter rise by 2150, with estimates of 17 million displace from Bangladesh alone. It would eventually flood large areas of Florida and Louisiana. Maybe that will get the U.S. attention? Maybe the Pearl Harbor of GW to break their indifference.
We only know that it has previously collapsed due to natural temperature change and that GW is almost certain to eventually be enough to start the process. The only possible ’save’ would be a cooling of the NA due to a termination of the ThermoHaline Circulation, but that would lead to massive migration out of Europe. I don’t think there is a ‘win’ here!
Popularity: 24% [?]
