Sentences with phrase «melting of ice sheets»

Now assume that the rate of melting of those ice sheets is doubling every 5 or 10 years, as the sparse data seems to imply.

It takes thousands and thousands of years to have any substantial melting of ice sheets!

This indicates a rapid disappearance rather than a gradual melting of the ice sheet.

But even just partial melting of these ice sheets will have a dramatic effect on sea level rise.

So scientists are keen to know at what temperature melting of the ice sheet is likely to become irreversible.

Melting of the ice sheet in Northeast Greenland is significantly lower than in southern and western Greenland, and the researchers warn that the effects may be far more dramatic in other parts of the Greenland coastal waters than in Young Sound.

The water most likely came from melting of the ice sheet — rather than an ice - dammed lake bursting or glacial lake drainage — as the high discharge was maintained for so long, Forster said.

Given the increased levels of certainty regarding human - induced global warming (from 90 to 95 %), more robust projections on sea - level rise and data on melting of ice sheets, and the «carbon budget» for staying below the 2 °C target, the WGI conclusions together with other AR5 component reports are likely to put more pressure on the UNFCCC parties to deliver by 2015 an ambitious agreement that is capable of preventing dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.

Volcanic eruptions have been known to cool global climate, but they can also accelerate melting of ice sheets by changing the surface reflectance of the ice.

A new study says that climate - induced feedback loops could lead to a change in ocean stratification and the more rapid melting of ice sheets.

Severinghaus played several roles in the NEEM project, but his principal contribution was to determine the extent of surface melting of the ice sheet using the ratios of certain gases trapped within bubbles in the ice.

At a global scale, the increased melting of the ice sheet contributes to rising sea level and may impact global ocean circulation patterns through the so - called «thermohaline circulation'that sustains among others, the Gulf Stream, which keeps Europe warm.

Rasmussen's article shows that repeated, severe melting of the ice sheet contributed to a very unstable climate even during the Ice Age.

The findings sharpen the way glaciologists think about melting of ice sheets and how ice reflects light, according to Marek Stibal, a cryosphere ecologist at Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic and one of the lead authors of the new study.

However, of the 110 incoming solar energy peaks (about every 21,000 years) only 50 led to complete melting of the ice sheets.

This study does not show that the melt is decreasing, contrary it shows a small increase in ablation which is fully consistent with IPCC predictions concerning melt of the ice sheet.

Second, the risks posed by climate change — particularly by abrupt, unlikely events, like a sudden melting of the ice sheet, leading to rapid sea - level rise — are high and potentially very damaging.

The team stresses that even a little warming could cause irreversible melting of ice sheets and turn dense Amazon forests into dry savannah grassland.

Research by planetary scientists at Brown University finds that periodic melting of ice sheets on a cold early Mars would have created enough water to carve the ancient valleys and lakebeds seen on the planet today.

Beyond the direct melting of the ice sheets by warmer air, what are some of the forcings and feedbacks that may accelerate (or decelerate) slr?

Some scientists and groups pushing for aggressive cuts in the gases said the panel was much too conservative in some projections, particularly in assessing how much melting of ice sheets might raise sea levels in the next 100 years.

It will also confirm the accelerated rate of change for impacts such as sea - level rise, the steady retreat of Arctic sea ice and quickened melting of ice sheets and glaciers, as well as offer more detail on scenarios that will shape international negotiations over both short - term and long - term greenhouse gas emissions, including how long «business as usual» can be sustained without dangerous risk.

Further melting of the ice sheets will destroy the climate conditions which allowed agriculture and the rise of civilisation in the first place.

However, the accelerated retreat of glaciers, combined with greater melting of these ice sheets, suggest that earlier projections of sea - level rise over the next century — such as in the 2007 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — are conservative.8, 9

A new study says that climate - induced feedback loops could lead to a change in ocean stratification and the more rapid melting of ice sheets.

Snow high on the Greenland Ice Sheet typically has black carbon concentrations too low to significantly affect its reflectivity, but in 2012 large wildfires in Canada and Siberia and favorable winds may have combined to trigger record surface melting of the ice sheet that year.

To determine whether this increased melting of the ice sheets is part of a longer - term trend, Bindschadler and other scientists have set out to answer two daunting questions.

That would have coincided with the tail end of melting of the ice sheets from the last ice age, says first author Matthieu Carré of the Institute of Evolutionary Sciences of Montpellier in France.

This study does not show that the melt is decreasing, [to the] contrary it shows a small increase in ablation which is fully consistent with IPCC predictions concerning melt of the ice sheet.

That might open the door to using an atom interferometer to measure tiny variations in Earth's gravity with far greater precision than current satellites, providing a new tool to map the flows of mass around the globe due to processes such as the draining of subsurface aquifers and the melting of ice sheets.

The Stern Review, an excellent new report by the U.K. Treasury, makes clear that the consequences could be catastrophic: melting of ice sheets, with a huge rise of ocean levels; massive crop failures; increased transmission of diseases; and potentially calamitous effects on ecosystem services.

Yet the water in the cavity never refroze, suggesting that the melting of some ice sheets will be difficult to reverse, even if human - driven warming is curbed.

Computer simulations had suggested that the melting of ice sheets and the consequent rise in sea level could affect the distribution of mass on the Earth's surface.

The study helps researchers understand the oceanographic processes necessary to better predict future sea - level rise from the melting of ice sheets due to climate change.

The study shows how local weather extremes might have driven the 2015 melting of the ice sheet, which holds enough water to cause global sea levels to rise 7 meters.

«Based on the UN climate panel's report on sea level rise, supplemented with an expert elicitation about the melting of the ice sheets, for example, how fast the ice on Greenland and Antarctica will melt while considering the regional changes in the gravitational field and land uplift, we have calculated how much the sea will rise in Northern Europe,» explains Aslak Grinsted.

The melting of the ice sheet is responsible for a maximum of a third of this.

The academics suggest that the melting of the ice sheet may have been caused in part by the fact that some of it rests in basins below sea level.

Some scientists have argued that Earth's crust in northern portions of North America is still slowly springing upward in response to the melting of the ice sheet that smothered the region during the last ice age.

The IPCC has taken a crack at that, identifying 26 «key vulnerabilities» in its most recent assessment, ranging from declines in agricultural productivity to the melting of ice sheets and polar ice cover as well as determining how to judge if they are spiraling out of control.

In a new study published today in Nature, researchers from UCL (University College London), University of Cambridge and University of Louvain have combined existing ideas to solve the problem of which solar energy peaks in the last 2.6 million years led to the melting of the ice sheets and the start of a warm period.

Through his research on the melting of ice sheets and the ensuing sea - level rise, Wiens is uniquely positioned to talk about climate change.

The big «point of no return'though is usually associated with the melting of the ice sheets — in particular, Greenland and the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS).