Ice melting globally at a faster rate, NASA reported

by nate on Wednesday, December 17th, 2008 | Knowledge, World

Between 1.5 trillion and 2 trillion tons of ice in Greenland, Antarctica and Alaska has melted at an accelerating rate since 2003, according to NASA scientists, in the latest signs of what they say is global warming.

Using new satellite technology that measures changes in mass in mountain glaciers and ice sheets, NASA geophysicist Scott Luthcke concluded that the losses amounted to enough water to fill the Chesapeake Bay 21 times.

“The ice tells us in a very real way how the climate is changing,” said Luthcke, who will present his findings this week at the American Geophysical Union conference in San Francisco, California.

NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment, or GRACE, mission uses two orbiting satellites to measure the “mass balance” of a glacier, or the net annual difference between ice accumulation and ice loss.

“A few degrees of change [in temperature] can increase the amount of mass loss, and that contributes to sea level rise and changes in ocean current,” Luthcke said

For detailed article from CNN, click here.

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Tags: Alaska, Antarctica, global warming, GRACE, Greenland, Ice melting, NASA

8 Responses to “Ice melting globally at a faster rate, NASA reported”

1
nyCat Says:
December 17th, 2008 at 8:15 am
Scary scary news. I hope Weather in USA does not become too bad.
2
bintangkecil Says:
December 18th, 2008 at 12:41 am
There is snow in Vegas this year. There is snow everywhere hopefully the melting rate will slow down a bit … with humans’ help perhaps?
3
nate Says:
December 18th, 2008 at 1:59 pm
so does in SoCal (Palmdale area), it’s the first time after about 15 years? amazing!
4
toaster001 Says:
December 18th, 2008 at 10:46 pm
Dear Colleagues: The following might be of interest on the use of highly reflective microcrystals (”micromirrors”) for increasing terrestrial albedo:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4B_dnIMiaA

This may be a more feasible approach as compared to other proposals.
5
Jet Cloud Says:
December 18th, 2008 at 11:24 pm
Warming is in the Summer. Winters will be colder.
6
Jake Says:
December 19th, 2008 at 3:30 pm
You have to be kidding me. The Nation is in a deep freeze and the polar caps are melting? Spotted Owl Gore is a nut job. He has $1500.00 electic bill in one of his houses in Nashville, flys all over the world and rides in a caravan of SUV’s. He doesn’t seem too worried about it, or his personal carbon footprint. why isn’t he worried? Because even he knows global warming is crap, it is a politcal thing, not an enviromental one.
7
Barry Says:
December 19th, 2008 at 10:58 pm
This is a whole lot of B.S. Did anyone consider asking the question is there ice forming anywhere else? You know maybe to make up for the ice lost in some places. Another thing if you look at the locations of NASA’s temp. measuring stations(NOAH) you will find some of the probes in boxes located in the middle of black top parking lots. One even had a light bulb that ran 24/7. With false readings like that of course the globe would seem to be warming. With people like this running NASA we’ll never get back on the moon, much less Mars.
8
Barry Says:
December 19th, 2008 at 11:04 pm
Did anyone ever see the episode of South Park with Al Gore? ManBearPig……… that’s all that needs to be said. The man is either crazy or he’s scamming the entire world and going to get rich selling his stupid carbon credits. Either way he has a nobel peace prize for his scam. Thats about as good as giving it to Yassar Arifat for being “peaceful”.