Sentences with phrase «ice surface loss»

As reported in Remote Sensing of Environment, from 1953 to 2010, the average rate of ice surface loss was 18 centimeters (7.1 inches) per year.

Not exact matches

The drought that is devastating California and much of the West has dried the region so much that 240 gigatons worth of surface and groundwater have been lost, roughly the equivalent to a 3.9 - inch layer of water over the entire West, or the annual loss of mass from the Greenland Ice Sheet, according to the study.

They observed three types of ice losses, each with a distinctive and detailed sound signature: the splash of an ice block falling off into the water; the crack of a fragment sliding down the glacier's rough surface; and the soft thud of an underwater ice chunk breaking away and floating up, followed by a secondary impact as it surfaces.

Melting near the edges of the Greenland ice sheet, where the surface is below 4,000 feet, causes about half of its annual ice loss.

Sea ice and snow cover loss create a feedback look that can accelerate global warming; with fewer reflective surfaces on the planet, more sunlight can thereby be absorbed, driving surface temperatures even higher, the scientists explained.

But DeConto says that Hindmarsh's work predicts future ice loss based on what's happened so far, and doesn't take into account processes like ice surface melt that haven't kicked in yet.

By 1900, increased emissions of soot could have triggered the loss of more than 15 m of ice from a glacier's surface; by 1930, the loss could have totaled 30 m or more — magnitudes and timing that can easily account for the Alpine glacial retreat, the scientists contend.

Complementary analyses of the surface mass balance of Greenland (Tedesco et al, 2011) also show that 2010 was a record year for melt area extent... Extrapolating these melt rates forward to 2050, «the cumulative loss could raise sea level by 15 cm by 2050 ″ for a total of 32 cm (adding in 8 cm from glacial ice caps and 9 cm from thermal expansion)- a number very close to the best estimate of Vermeer & Rahmstorf (2009), derived by linking the observed rate of sea level rise to the observed warming.

New «benchmark» for loss of reflectivity Another wild card is the loss of the albedo of the ice, or its surface reflectivity.

As the paper suggests, one could be the evaporation of surface waters that have become exposed because of sea ice loss in the region, he added.

The team also compared the ice loss up until the mid-1980s to that observed by satellites over roughly the last decade and found that today the rate of ice loss is twice the 20th century average, mostly because of increased water runoff from the ice sheet's surface.

The comet appears to have undergone visible changes, including the changes in the size and number of surface features such as smooth patches, pits, and craters, and the loss of ice vaporized by the Sun or blasted off its surface by the Solar Wind into its tail as well as failing back on the object like snow, so that it appears to shrink, on average, by 25 to 50 centimeters (9.2 to 19.7 inches) with each orbit around the Sun.

One year without a net loss also doesn't buck the long - term trend of Greenland losing ice, both from surface melt and from ocean waters eating away at glaciers that flow out to sea.

The estimated 2010 or 2011 surface mass imbalance (~ 300 Gt / yr) is comparable to the GRACE estimates of the total mass loss (which includes ice loss via dynamic effects such as the speeding up of outlet glaciers) of 248 ± 43 Gt / yr for the years 2005 - 2009 Chen et al, 2011.

Much of the recent sea ice loss is attributed to warmer sea surface temperatures with southerly wind anomalies a contributing cause [Francis and Hunter, 2007; Sorteberg and Kvingedal, 2006], with thermodynamic coupling leading to associated increases in atmospheric moisture.»

However, the idea is simple, and I've talked about this much in many presentations this winter: Take the amount of ice you need to get rid of from Greenland to raise sea level 2 m in the next century, reduce it by your best estimate of the amount that would be removed by surface mass balance losses, and try to push the rest out of the aggregate cross-sectional area of Greenland's marine - based outlet glaciers.

The warming being seen during the Autumn and Winter is mainly due to increased heat fluxes from the surface (Screen & Simmonds 2010) due to thinner ice and more open water, so represents a net heat loss to the atmosphere.

There's much more to discuss about the significance of surface melting in relation to Greenland ice loss and — in the end — a rising contribution to the oceans and sea - level rise.

If the NAO were driving an ocean current that contains higher SST's and more saline surface water into the Arctic region, I suspect it would be a possible correlation that salinity may be playing a part in the Arctic ice loss.

This result would be strongly dependent on the exact dynamic response of the Greenland ice sheet to surface meltwater, which is modeled poorly in todays global models.Yes human influence on the climate is real and we might even now be able to document changes in the behavior of weather phenomena related to disasters (e.g., Emanuel 2005), but we certainly haven't yet seen it in the impact record (i.e., economic losses) of extreme events.

The coincidence of this area loss and a 30 square kilometer loss in 2008 with abnormal warmth this year, the setting of increasing sea surface temperatures and sea ice decline are all part of a climate warming pattern.

The total 2000 — 2008 mass loss of ~ 1500 gigatons, equivalent to 0.46 millimeters per year of global sea level rise, is equally split between surface processes (runoff and precipitation) and ice dynamics.

Combined climate / ice sheet model estimates in which the Greenland surface temperature was as high during the Eemian as indicated by the NEEM ice core record suggest that loss of less than about 1 m sea level equivalent is very unlikely (e.g. Robinson et al. (2011).

It seems clear that the SSTAs are a function of seasonal sea ice loss at the surface.

Sea ice can reflect solar energy to reduce surface warming or insulate water against heat loss.

GRACE measures changes in the strength of the gravitational force over the surface of the Earth, including changes driven by the accumulation or loss of ice.

Everyone talks about the Arctic ice loss and deep ocean warming, and the ocean surface not warming, but the land has warmed by nearly a degree since 1980, without pause, and we live on land but neglect trying to explain this.

12) Loss of ice and snow in the Arctic enhances climate warming by increasing absorption of the sun's energy at the surface of the planet.

Till 2005, surface melt and calving icebergs contributed roughly the same amount (48 percent and 52 percent respectively) to ice loss.

The loss of large areas of ice on the surface could accelerate global warming because less of the sun's energy would be reflected away from Earth to begin with (refer back to our discussion of the greenhouse effect).

Furthermore, researchers show the loss of sea ice reconnects the oceans with the winds causing a stirring effect that brings warmer water to the surface.

Loss of sea ice means more heat from the sun is absorbed by the ocean surface, adding to Arctic warming.

From 2011 to 2015, the ice surface decrease was 32 centimeters (13 inches) per year, which is a water loss of 4.43 gigatons annually, Zheng says.

Isn't increased ice melt essentially an indication of increased energy in the whole Earth system (and assuming that it doesn't correlate with increased solar radiation or increased loss of energy away from the whole Earth system, wouldn't that be a result of increased ACO2 regardless of the trend of global surface temperatures — assuming that there is no corresponding drop in surface temperatures?)

Editor's note: Marco Tedesco, Sarah Doherty, and other coauthors of the work described above urged the scientific community in a recent opinion piece on Eos.org to quantify the roles of multiple factors — among them coarsening of snow, light - absorbing particles, and melt ponds — in the darkening of the Greenland ice sheet's surface and subsequent ice loss.

A new study on ice loss in Antarctica by the British Antarctic Survey confirms what we already know about the effects of global warming but it differentiates between the effects of ocean currents, their cause and the air temperature effects at the ice surface.

The particularly rapid sea ice loss from 1997 to 2007 was related to extreme ocean conditions that drove a sustained warming of the surface waters throughout the subpolar Atlantic and Nordic Seas.

Pokrovsky predicts a further acceleration of melting of the thin ice and in general greater ice loss compared to his June prediction; this change is based on the increase in the sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies in the North Atlantic and the presence of hot air masses over Siberia and the Russian Arctic.

And Dr Bougamont said: «There are two sources of net ice loss: melting on the surface and increased flow of the ice itself, and there is a connection between these mechanisms that isn't taken into account by standard ice sheet models.»

NOAA's CSV2 model predicted much greater sea ice loss around Antarctica than normal, and much higher sea surface temperatures than normal months before it happened.

Lukovich et al, 4.3, n / a, Heuristic It is hypothesized that the 2012 fall sea ice extent will attain values comparable to those of 2011 based on a heuristic assessment of sea ice and surface atmospheric dynamics, with regional losses governed by local wind and ice conditions.

Southern Ocean surface cooling, while lower latitudes are warming, increases precipitation on the Southern Ocean, increasing ocean stratification, slowing deepwater formation, and increasing ice sheet mass loss.

The reason, Werner said, is because the loss of snow and ice makes the earth's surface less reflective, meaning solar radiation — or heat — is absorbed in greater amounts by the exposed dark ocean or tundra.

Furthermore, significant warming during the satellite sea surface temperature record (1982 — 2009) is mainly limited to the summer months... we speculate that Bering Sea primary productivity is likely to rise under conditions of future warming and sea ice loss.»

Therefore, a greater open ocean from loss of sea ice concentration allows for a larger exchange of these surface heat fluxes.

For example, the dramatic decline of summer sea ice in the Arctic — a loss of ice cover roughly equal to half the area of the continental United States — exacerbates global warming by reducing the reflectivity of Earth's surface and increasing the amount of heat absorbed.

For example, if ice sheet mass loss becomes rapid, it is conceivable that the cold fresh water added to the ocean could cause regional surface cooling [199], perhaps even at a point when sea level rise has only reached a level of the order of a meter [200].

Losses from surface melting, water runoff, the breakup of glaciers into the ocean (calving), and the transformation of solid ice into water vapor (sublimation) exceed any gains through snowfall.2, 3,4,5 The Greenland ice sheet loses most of its mass on the perimeter, through a dozen fast - moving glaciers, including Helheim.5, 6

Shfaqat Khan from the Technical University of Denmark and colleagues used more than 30 years of surface elevation measurements of the entire ice sheet to discover that overall loss is accelerating.

To summarise the arguments presented so far concerning ice - loss in the arctic basin, at least four mechanisms must be recognised: (i) a momentum - induced slowing of winter ice formation, (ii) upward heat - flux from anomalously warm Atlantic water through the surface low ‐ salinity layer below the ice, (iii) wind patterns that cause the export of anomalous amounts of drift ice through the Fram Straits and disperse pack - ice in the western basin and (iv) the anomalous flux of warm Bering Sea water into the eastern Arctic of the mid 1990s.