We got mail today from a climate scientist and oceanographer, correcting our segment about Greenland's ice sheet (video). Rebecca Dell writes:
On yesterday's show, you put up a couple maps showing Greenland ice melt, including one where almost the entire island was red, and said that "Greenland's ice sheet is all but gone." I want your audience to know that the entire Greenland ice sheet has not melted. The red color on the map indicates that the surface of the ice sheet has melted, a thin layer of water at the top, but there is still a huge amount of ice underneath. In the center of Greenland, the ice is 2 miles thick, and almost all of that ice is still there.
This story is still important news. In most summers, we see surface melt around the edges of Greenland, but very little melting in the center.
This extent of melting is unprecedented in the 30-or-so years in which we have good observations from satellites. However, glaciologists think that even in a world with severe climate change it would take a couple centuries for the whole two-mile-thick ice sheet to melt. That ice sheet stores enough water to raise global sea level by 20 feet, so even if only part of it melted, that would still be a disaster. Since that risk is so severe, and since it gets a fair amount of attention in the press, it's important not to confuse people by implying that the whole ice sheet can somehow come and go in a matter of days.
On the plus side, Rebecca has agreed to be our in-house climate scientist and oceanographer, to go along with our in-house astrophysicist. Get your own.
Thanks also to @BradWeikel, who corrected us on the twitters. We are so corrected.
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On all accounts this is good to know!
Did your informant happen to mention that most of the ice still there is slipping on the meltwaters and that lubrication will cause the ice to push further out thus causing more to break away? Just curious.
You see there are cracks and tunnels in that ice sheet that drain that water down to the bottom.
(sarcasm alert)
But...but...but there's no such thing as climate change!!! And even if there is, it isn't our fault!!!
Good to see the correction, as well as a clear explanation of what's going on. The pictures tend to suggest a different reading, which has been all over the media. Late this morning, CNN was stilll reporting that "almost all" of Greenland's ice had melted.
If so, much of Long Island should be underwater . . .
I am really glad this correction was made. I was a bit perplexed by the whole idea of all the ice being gone within such a short amount of time. Talk about a doomsday scenario. Thanks Rebecca Dell!
Thanks for the information! It's good to have an explanation of what happened in Greenland.
How great to have a climate scientist and oceanographer available! (Can we share her?)
I had already read other more scientific sources on this particular instance, and Steve's post yesterday didn't say the ice sheet was all but gone. People simply didn't read the graphic's color legend and concluded that anyway, or concluded the graphic was intentionally misrepresenting the true facts on the ground. It wasn't.
It was obvious, an ice sheet 2 miles thick doesn't melt in 4 days unless something really major happens. For example, if a big rock hit the earth and raised the temperature of the atmosphere several hundred degrees. In which case we would all or almost all be dead. We wouldn't have noticed.
Whew that was a close call. I still haven't finished my ARK.
You want drama? Wait till the whole of the Western Antarctic ice sheet melts.. Have kittens now!
http://www.gulf-times.com/site/topics/article.asp?cu_no=2&item_no=521442&version=1&template_id=39&parent_id=21
sooo,,,,,, we should be,,,, protecting our ground waters,,,,,,,?