Sentences with phrase «rate of ice sheet»

For example, there appears to be a greater rate of ice sheet thinning in parts of West Antarctica and Greenland than was known about in 2001.

And it would «seem» that one of these nasty surprises is an already observed faster than usual rate of ice sheet and methane response.

For Antarctica as a whole, the study found the current rate of ice sheet mass loss to be about 160 billion metric tons of ice per year.

Polar amplification, in which temperatures at the poles rise more rapidly than temperatures at the equator (due to factors like the global atmospheric and oceanic circulation of heat from the equator to the poles), plays a major role in the rate of ice sheet retreat.

Polar amplification, in which temperatures at the poles rise more rapidly than temperatures at the equator (due to factors like the global atmospheric and oceanic circulation of heat from the equator to the poles), plays a major role in the rate of ice sheet retreat.

For example, there appears to be a greater rate of ice sheet thinning in parts of West Antarctica and Greenland than was known about in 2001.

It could lead to a massive increase in the rate of ice sheet melt, with direct consequences for global sea level rise.»

«We're providing mechanistic explanations for how those dramatic sorts of rates of ice sheet retreat could actually happen,» DeConto told me, «but we don't need [Hansen's] feedback [to reach similar conclusions.]»

The modest increase in ice discharge over the past 7 years is contrasted by high rates of ice sheet mass loss and distinct spatial patters of elevation lowering.

Not exact matches

According to the Center for Remote Sensing of Ice Sheets (CReSIS), an NSF Science and Technology Center led by the University of Kansas, the melt from Greenland's ice sheet contributes to global sea level rise at a rate of 0.52 millimeters annualIce Sheets (CReSIS), an NSF Science and Technology Center led by the University of Kansas, the melt from Greenland's ice sheet contributes to global sea level rise at a rate of 0.52 millimeters annualice sheet contributes to global sea level rise at a rate of 0.52 millimeters annually.

Following the maxim of keeping everything as simple as possible, but not simpler, Will Steffen from the Australian National University and I drew up an Anthropocene equation by homing in on the rate of change of Earth's life support system: the atmosphere, oceans, forests and wetlands, waterways and ice sheets and fabulous diversity of life.

Estimated changes in the mass of Greenland's ice sheet suggest it is melting at a rate of about 239 cubic kilometres (57.3 cubic miles) per year.

A report in the last issue of Nature finds that between April 2002 and April 2006, the rate at which southern Greenland's ice liquefied jumped by 250 percent — supporting the idea that the Greenland ice sheet responds quickly to slight changes in climate.

When parts of the ice melt, liquid water trickles to the base and this can lubricate the underside of the ice sheet, allowing it to slide more quickly into the sea and drive up sea levels at a faster rate.

Ambient geothermal heat emanating up from the seafloor melts the underside of the ice sheet at a rate of several penny thicknesses per year.

The lakes are fed by geothermal heat that seeps up from the Earth's interior, melting away the bottom of the ice sheet at a rate of several dime - thicknesses per year and liberating water from the ice.

A new study published in Nature yesterday that used the photographs found that the Greenland ice sheet lost about 9,000 gigatons of ice between 1900 and 2010 and that the rate has accelerated in recent years.

Data published yesterday by scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, and colleagues revealed that Earth's ice sheets are melting at a rate that could mean more than 32 centimeters of global sea level rise by 2050.

The world's biggest reserves of above - water ice are in Antarctica, and understanding the rate at which the ice sheet will slough into the sea could help researchers refine sea level rise forecasts.

A new study by scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, and the University of California, Irvine, shows that while ice sheets and glaciers continue to melt, changes in weather and climate over the past decade have caused Earth's continents to soak up and store an extra 3.2 trillion tons of water in soils, lakes and underground aquifers, temporarily slowing the rate of sea level rise by about 20 percent.

Revised tallies confirm that the rate of sea level rise is accelerating as Earth warms and ice sheets thaw

But that could soon change, Rignot said, because the rate at which ice sheets are losing mass is increasing three times faster than the rate of ice loss from mountain glaciers and ice caps.

The key issue in predicting future rates of global sea level rise is to understand and predict how ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica will react to a warming climate.

[7] The IceCon project aims to gain a better understanding of the rate of the loss of ice — now and in the past - from the Antarctic ice sheet in the Dronning Maud Land area, and includes six partners: Université Libre de Bruxelles, Royal Observatory of Belgium, University of Luxembourg, Norwegian Polar Institute, and Aberystwyth University.

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.

When scientists talk about the «collapse» of an ice sheet, they mean irreversible, rapidly increased rates of recession.

When this amount declines, the rate of summer melt declines and the ice sheets begin to grow.

Either the glaciers would have to flow into the ocean at unrealistic rates, or rapid melting would have to be triggered over a much larger area of the ice sheet than current evidence suggests.

Terrestrial glacial geologists (such as ourselves) can gain information of past glacial behaviour from mapping and dating former ice sheet extents, and determining the rates at which they receded and thinned, [e.g., 16, 17 - 19].

The rate of release from the tundra alone is predicted to reach 1.5 billion tons of carbon per annum before 2030, contributing to accelerated climate change, perhaps resulting in sustained decadal doubling of ice loss causing collapse of the Greenland Ice Sheet (Hansen et al, 201ice loss causing collapse of the Greenland Ice Sheet (Hansen et al, 201Ice Sheet (Hansen et al, 2011).

Joughin et al. (2010) applied a numerical ice sheet model to predicting the future of PIG, their model suggested ongoing loss of ice mass from PIG, with a maximum rate of global sea level rise of 2.7 cm per century.

Our older projections, which were developed to be consistent with some key findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)'s Fifth Assessment Report, assumed a steady increase in the rate of ice - sheet shrinkage.

Especially in West Antarctica, where much of the ice sheet sits below sea level, complex interactions at the edge of the ice sheet can sensitively affect the rate of ice - sheet retreat.

Given that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet has a total sea level equivalent of 3.3 m1, with 1.5 m from Pine Island Glacier alone4, marine ice sheet collapse could be a significant challenge for future generations, with major changes in rates of sea level rise being possible within just the next couple of hundred yeaIce Sheet has a total sea level equivalent of 3.3 m1, with 1.5 m from Pine Island Glacier alone4, marine ice sheet collapse could be a significant challenge for future generations, with major changes in rates of sea level rise being possible within just the next couple of hundred ySheet has a total sea level equivalent of 3.3 m1, with 1.5 m from Pine Island Glacier alone4, marine ice sheet collapse could be a significant challenge for future generations, with major changes in rates of sea level rise being possible within just the next couple of hundred yeaice sheet collapse could be a significant challenge for future generations, with major changes in rates of sea level rise being possible within just the next couple of hundred ysheet collapse could be a significant challenge for future generations, with major changes in rates of sea level rise being possible within just the next couple of hundred years.

These simulations provide strong evidence that the process of marine - ice sheet instability is already underway on Thwaites Glacier, largely due to the observed high sub-ice shelf melt rates.

As glaciers and overland ice sheets shed ice and the warming oceans expand, sea level rise is accelerating; NASA says the rate of sea level rise has jumped from 1 millimeter per year 100 years ago to 3 millimeters per year today.

The differences are that the UVic model has a smaller forcing from the ice sheets, possibly because of an insufficiently steep lapse rate (5ºC / km instead of a steeper value that would be more typical of dryer polar regions), and also a smaller change from increased dust.

Acceleration of melting of ice - sheets, glaciers and ice - caps: A wide array of satellite and ice measurements now demonstrate beyond doubt that both the Greenland and Antarctic ice - sheets are losing mass at an increasing rate.

This process is difficult to accurately model, but rapid ice sheet collapse would certainly result in dramatically higher rates of sea level rise once this critical threshold is passed.

IceCon aims to gain a better understanding of the rate of the loss of ice — now and in the past - from the Antarctic ice sheet in the Dronning...

Global ice - sheets are melting at an increased rate; Arctic sea - ice is disappearing much faster than recently projected, and future sea - level rise is now expected to be much higher than previously forecast, according to a new global scientific synthesis prepared by some of the world's top climate scientists.

Some of the heat seems to be going into melting the ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica which are losing ice mass at an accelerating rate.

That estimate was based in part on the fact that sea level is now rising 3.2 mm / yr (3.2 m / millennium)[57], an order of magnitude faster than the rate during the prior several thousand years, with rapid change of ice sheet mass balance over the past few decades [23] and Greenland and Antarctica now losing mass at accelerating rates [23]--[24].

Our modelled values are consistent with current rates of Antarctic ice loss and sea - level rise, and imply that accelerated mass loss from marine - based portions of Antarctic ice sheets may ensue when an increase in global mean air temperature of only 1.4 - 2.0 deg.

A smaller ice sheet extent might still respond with the observed high rate of sea level rise (5 m per century) if the warming is much more rapid than when ice sheets were more extensive.

Our experiments show a clear threshold in the relationship between the rate of sea - level rise, and the rate of (sea - level contributing) ice - sheet mass loss.

That rate is not consistent with a top down melting model and implies dynamic response of ice sheets to warming.

There are some painful, and even dire, concerns expressed about the potential that Greenland ice sheets could be «entirely lost» if emissions continue at a business - as - usual pace; about the rate of sea - level rise increasing «faster and faster with time»; and about the planet's ice sheets likely becoming «more active» over coming decades than they have been over recent decades.

Paleoclimate inferences probably don't probe the full span of uncertainy associated with forcing and rate - dependent mechanisms of melt, and the hysteresis associated with ice sheets.

From recent instrumental observations alone we are therefore unable to predict whether mass loss from these ice sheets will vary linearly with changes in the rate of sea - level rise, or if a non-linear response is more likely.