Re: Wow! Greenland to be GREEN again


Leftists = traitors wrote:
And the EWF (Earth Warming Faggots) seem to think this is a bad thing.

Nice thing for Greenland, bad thing for about everyone else. Do a
little research into the areas once known as the "Fertile Crescent"
(Now largely desert) and the kingdoms of North and East Africa (settled
when the land was farmable) that are now covered by the Sahara Desert.

Perhaps it's a good time to invest in Antarctica, though the enhance
skin cancer risk may be a problem.

Though this warming is part of a historical trend, all evidence
indicates it is happening at a dramatically enhanced pace, due to the
influence of man made polutants. Nothing hysterical about that. Just
common sense observation, supported by overwhelming scientific
evidence.


The loss of ice from Greenland doubled between 1996 and 2005, as its
glaciers flowed faster into the ocean in response to a generally warmer
climate, according to a NASA/University of Kansas study.

The study will be published tomorrow in the journal Science. It
concludes the changes to Greenland's glaciers in the past decade are
widespread, large and sustained over time. They are progressively
affecting the entire ice *** and increasing its contribution to
global sea level rise.

Researchers Eric Rignot of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena,
Calif., and Pannir Kanagaratnam of the University of Kansas Center for
Remote Sensing of Ice Sheets, Lawrence, used data from Canadian and
European satellites. They conducted a nearly comprehensive survey of
Greenland glacial ice discharge rates at different times during the
past 10 years.

"The Greenland ice ***'s contribution to sea level is an issue of
considerable societal and scientific importance," Rignot said. "These
findings call into question predictions of the future of Greenland in a
warmer climate from computer models that do not include variations in
glacier flow as a component of change. Actual changes will likely be
much larger than predicted by these models."

The evolution of Greenland's ice *** is being driven by several
factors. These include accumulation of snow in its interior, which adds
mass and lowers sea level; melting of ice along its edges, which
decreases mass and raises sea level; and the flow of ice into the sea
from outlet glaciers along its edges, which also decreases mass and
raises sea level. This study focuses on the least well known component
of change, which is glacial ice flow. Its results are combined with
estimates of changes in snow accumulation and ice melt from an
independent study to determine the total change in mass of the
Greenland ice ***.

Rignot said this study offers a comprehensive assessment of the role of
enhanced glacier flow, whereas prior studies of this nature had
significant coverage gaps. Estimates of mass loss from areas without
coverage relied upon models that assumed no change in ice flow rates
over time. The researchers theorized if glacier acceleration is an
important factor in the evolution of the Greenland ice ***, its
contribution to sea level rise was being underestimated.

To test this theory, the scientists measured ice velocity with
interferometric synthetic-aperture radar data collected by the European
Space Agency's Earth Remote Sensing Satellites 1 and 2 in 1996; the
Canadian Space Agency's Radarsat-1 in 2000 and 2005; and the European
Space Agency's Envisat Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar in 2005. They
combined the ice velocity data with ice *** thickness data from
airborne measurements made between 1997 and 2005, covering almost
Greenland's entire coast, to calculate the volumes of ice transported
to the ocean by glaciers and how these volumes changed over time. The
glaciers surveyed by those satellite and airborne instrument data drain
a sector encompassing nearly 1.2 million square kilometers (463,000
square miles), or 75 percent of the Greenland ice *** total area.

From 1996 to 2000, widespread glacial acceleration was found at
latitudes below 66 degrees north. This acceleration extended to 70
degrees north by 2005. The researchers estimated the ice mass loss
resulting from enhanced glacier flow increased from 63 cubic kilometers
in 1996 to 162 cubic kilometers in 2005. Combined with the increase in
ice melt and in snow accumulation over that same time period, they
determined the total ice loss from the ice *** increased from 96
cubic kilometers in 1996 to 220 cubic kilometers in 2005. To put this
into perspective, a cubic kilometer is one trillion liters
(approximately 264 billion gallons of water), about a quarter more than
Los Angeles uses in one year.

Glacier acceleration has been the dominant mode of mass loss of the ice
*** in the last decade. From 1996 to 2000, the largest acceleration
and mass loss came from southeast Greenland. From 2000 to 2005, the
trend extended to include central east and west Greenland.

"In the future, as warming around Greenland progresses further north,
we expect additional losses from northwest Greenland glaciers, which
will then increase Greenland's contribution to sea level rise," Rignot
said.

Source: NASA




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