Greenland's rapidly melting ice sheet will eventually raise global sea level by at least 27 centimeters & more than twice as much as previously forecast, according to a study published Monday.That's because of something that could be called zombie ice.
That's doomed ice that, while still attached to thicker areas of ice, is no longer getting replenished by parent glaciers now receiving less snow, Associated Press reported.Without replenishment, the doomed ice is melting from climate change and will inevitably raise seas, said study co-author William Colgan, a glaciologist at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland.It's dead ice.
It's just going to melt and disappear from the ice sheet,& Colgan said in an interview.
&This ice has been consigned to the ocean, regardless of what climate (emissions) scenario we take now.Study lead author Jason Box, a glaciologist at the Greenland survey, said it is &more like one foot in the grave.The unavoidable 27cm in the study is more than twice as much sea level rise as scientists had previously expected from the melting of Greenland's ice sheet.The study in the journal Nature Climate Change said it could reach as much as 78 centimeters.
By contrast, last year's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report projected a range of 6 to 13 centimeters for likely sea level rise from Greenland ice melt by the year 2100.Greenland's total ice volume will melt no matter what happens with the world cutting carbon pollution, Colgan said.I think starving would be a good phrase,& for what's happening to the ice, Colgan said.One of the study authors said that more than 110 trillion metric tons of ice is already doomed to melt from the warming ice sheet's inability to replenish its edges.
When that ice melts into water, if it were concentrated only over the United States, it would be 11 meters deep, AP reported.This is a really large loss and will have a detrimental effect on coastlines around the world,& said NYU's David Holland who just returned from Greenland, but is not part of the study.Colgan responded that the team doesn''t know how long it will take for all the doomed ice to melt, but making an educated guess, it would probably be by the end of this century, or at least by 2150.The post Zombie ice from Greenland will raise sea level 27cm first appeared on Ariana News.