the world’s largest scientific society released a report nudging the public to wake up to the scientifically sound and increasingly frightening reality of climate change.
“As scientists, it is not our role to tell people what they should do or must believe about the rising threat of climate change,” the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) wrote in the introduction to its new report, “What We Know.” “But we consider it to be our responsibility as professionals to ensure, to the best of our ability, that people understand what we know: human-caused climate change is happening, we face risks of abrupt, unpredictable and potentially irreversible changes and responding now will lower the risk and cost of taking action.”
“They are very clearly saying that we as the scientific community are completely convinced, based upon the evidence, that climate change is happening and human-caused,” said Dr. Anthony Leiserowitz, the director of the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication. “The more people understand that the experts have reached this agreement, the more they in turn decide, ‘well, then I think it’s happening, and I think it’s human-caused, and I think it’s a serious problem, and in turn it increases people’s support for policy.”
The report noted that even though 97 percent of experts agree climate change is happening and we humans are causing it, Americans remain under the impression that the question is still unsettled. According to a 2013 report by the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication, 33 percent of Americans said they believed there was widespread disagreement among scientists and four percent said that “most scientists think global warming is not happening.” Only 42 percent of Americans knew that “most scientists think global warming is happening.”
The evidence that human behavior — such as our economies’ reliance on fossil fuels — is causing our climate to change and putting our planet and society at increased risk is overwhelming, the report authors write. “Levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are rising. Temperatures are going up. Springs are arriving earlier. Ice sheets are melting. Sea level is rising. The patterns of rainfall and drought are changing. Heat waves are getting worse as is extreme precipitation. The oceans are acidifying.”
Whether they link it to global warming or not, Americans already detect that something is changing. In 2013, the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication report found that 51 percent said weather in their local area had been worse over the past several years. That observation is in line with research. “These problems are very likely to become worse over the next 10 to 20 years and beyond,” the AAAS authors write. By becoming aware of the science behind global warming now, Americans will be better prepared to make “risk management” choices.
The AAAS says that “What We Know” will have an associated outreach campaign to scientists, economists, community leaders, policymakers and the public through media and meetings.
This is what climate change looks like.
Increasing Rate of Ice Melt in Greenland: "the ice is becoming soft, like butter".
Another in Peter Sinclair's excellent "This is Not Cool" videos produced for the Yale Climate Forum. Scientists provide insights on recent unprecedented melting of Greenland's interior ice sheet. Dramatically increased melt rates in Greenland from melt pools draining into moulins, basically rivers of melted ice. 42 million litres of fresh water drained out of one moulin per day. There are hundreds, possibly thousands more moulins on Greenland. Greenland is losing enough water each year to cover Germany 3 feet deep. “We’re in the midst of a climate catastrophe and glaciers are at the epicentre of that problem. The water is increasing the rate of ice melt in Greenland and the core of the ice sheet is becoming soft, like butter".
Heavy snow New York - New England: 1 - 2 feet of Snow expected.
Heavy snow New York - New England: 1 - 2 feet of Snow expected Wednesday.
Winter storm warnings from Kentucky to Maine. The Northeast will see over a foot of snow, and heavy rain and across much of the south.
Snow totals could exceed 2 feet in northern New England through Thursday.
Temperatures will be 10 to 20 degrees below average over the Great
Lakes, and will be 10 to 15 degrees above average for the Mid-Atlantic.
NASA's Operation IceBridge calculates rate of Ice loss in Greenland.
Research using NASA data is giving new insight into one of the processes causing Greenland's ice sheet to lose mass. A team of scientists used satellite observations and ice thickness measurements gathered by NASA's Operation IceBridge to calculate the rate at which ice flows through Greenland's glaciers into the ocean. The findings of this research give a clearer picture of how glacier flow affects the Greenland Ice Sheet and shows that this dynamic process is dominated by a small number of glaciers. Over the past few years, Operation IceBridge measured the thickness of many of Greenland's glaciers, which allowed researchers to make a more accurate calculation of ice discharge rates.
The calving front of Greenland’s Jakobshavn Glacier seen during an IceBridge survey flight in 2012.
Image Credit: NASA / Jefferson Beck
In a new study published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, researchers calculated ice discharge rates for 178 Greenland glaciers more than one kilometer (0.62 miles) wide.
Ice sheets grow when snow accumulates and is compacted into ice. They lose mass when ice and snow at the surface melts and runs off and when glaciers at the coast discharge ice into the ocean. The difference between yearly snowfall on an ice sheet and the sum of melting and discharge is called a mass budget. When these factors are equal, the mass budget is balanced, but for years the Greenland Ice Sheet has had a negative mass budget, meaning the ice sheet is losing mass overall.
For years the processes of surface melt and glacier discharge were roughly equal in size, but around 2006 surface melt increased and now exceeds iceberg production. In recent years, computer model projections have shown an increasing dominance of surface melt, but a limited amount of glacier thickness data made pinpointing a figure for ice discharge difficult.
Ice discharge is controlled by three major factors: ice thickness, glacier valley shape and ice velocity. Researchers used data from IceBridge's ice-penetrating radar – the Multichannel Coherent Radar Depth Sounder, or MCoRDS, which is operated by the Center for Remote Sensing of Ice Sheets at the University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kan. – to determine ice thickness and sub-glacial terrain, and images from satellite sources such as Landsat and Terra to calculate velocity. The team used several years of observations to ensure accuracy. "Glacier discharge may vary considerably between years," said Ellyn Enderlin, glaciologist at the University of Maine, Orono, Maine and the study's lead author. "Annual changes in speed and thickness must be taken into account."
Being able to study Greenland in such a large and detailed scale is one of IceBridge's strengths. "IceBridge has collected so much data on elevation and thickness that we can now do analysis down to the individual glacier level and do it for the entire ice sheet," said Michael Studinger, IceBridge project scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "We can now quantify contributions from the different processes that contribute to ice loss."
With data on glacier size, shape and speed, researchers could calculate each glacier's contribution to Greenland's mass loss and the total volume of ice being discharged from the Greenland Ice Sheet. Of the 178 glaciers studied, 15 accounted for more than three-quarters of ice discharged since 2000, and four accounted for roughly half. Considering the large size of some of Greenland's glacier basins, such as the areas drained by the Jakobshavn, Helheim and Kangerdlugssuaq glaciers, this was not exactly surprising.
What they also found was that the size of these basins did not necessarily correlate with glacier discharge rate, shuffling the order of Greenland's largest glaciers. Previously Helheim Glacier was thought to be Greenland's third largest glacier, but this study puts it in fifth place and adds two southeast Greenland glaciers, Koge Bugt and Ikertivaq South to the list of big ice-movers.
Glacier thickness measurements and this study's calculation methods have the potential to improve future computer model projections of the Greenland Ice Sheet. And with a new picture of which glaciers contribute most to mass loss, IceBridge will be able to more effectively target areas in future campaigns, promising more and better data to add to the research community's body of knowledge.
For more information on NASA's Operation Ice Bridge, visit:
www.nasa.gov/icebridge
George Hale
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
Greenland Ice Sheet melts completely in 20 years.
It's common knowledge that our planet's in trouble. The Earth is an organic organism, and we must address the problems like a doctor. There will be a diagnosis and some suggested therapy. The recommended treatment will be unpalatable to many. The severity of the problem Humans face cannot be repeated too often.. The planet is under serious threat, and it's due to us. We must implement serious cures to forestall the inevitable. It may already be too late. Temperature rise may seem to be progressing at a leisurely pace, and it doesn't appear imminent today according to some forecasters. They are wrong. Past history suggests catastrophic change has occurred before and is likely to happen again. The result was the mass extinction of species. This will happen in our lifetimes. Compare the state of the Earth as it is now to what it was when the average temperature was 8 degrees colder. That was the last Ice Age. Contemplate what the world will be like when it is 8 degrees warmer. These do not sound like a big difference, but on a global scale such temperature changes make huge differences. We are on our way to a desertification of vast areas of currently habitable land. Not to mention a loss of many major cities that are near the ocean. When the Greenland Ice Cap dissolves into the North Atlantic sea levels will rise around the planet by an estimated 20 feet. This is already starting to happen, and I think it will take less than 20 years for it to melt completely. The loss of the Arctic ice is accelerating this as most of the satellite data shows. We don't have very long, and there is little that can be done now to reverse it.
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| Large melt pool forming on Greenlands Ice Sheet |
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| Fractures forming on Glaciers in Greenland |
California storm
California storm March 1st 2014
This storm shows an counter-clockwise swirl and a well-defined eye. But this is only an "intense winter storm." Its lowest central pressure is 975 mb, the equivalent of a category 1 or 2 hurricane.
Another look at the storm via infrared satellite imagery:
We have received several inches of rain on the coast. More on this as it plays out overnight.
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