Global Warming is Happening Now
Scientists are no longer telling us what will happen, they are telling us what is happening.
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Greenland's glaciers : Last year, the Greenpeace ship appropriately named the Arctic Sunrise toured Greenland and conducted scientific research. Scientists onboard discovered that Greenland's glaciers were moving twice as fast as previously believed. |
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With increasing temperatures, most glaciers have been in retreat across the Arctic since the early 1960s, a trend that sped up in the 1990s. About half of the estimated loss of mass in glaciers worldwide is in western Alaska, while seasonal surface melt on the Greenland ice sheet by far the largest area of land ice in the northern hemisphere has been increasing since satellite observations began in 1979. Climate models predict that local warming over Greenland may be one to three times the global average, which additional models suggest could eventually lead to a near-complete melting of the Greenland ice sheet.
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Case Study: The
Kangerdlussuaq glacier
On July 20, 2005 scientists onboard the Greenpeace ship, Arctic Sunrise, made a stunning discovery: the Kangerdlussuaq glacier of Greenland has become one of the fastest moving glaciers in the world. Scientists from the
University of Maine found that the Kangerdlussuaq glacier has receded
more than three miles since 2001. Measurements from glaciers across
Greenland are providing startling new evidence of thinning, causing the
glaciers to speed up and decrease in overall mass, intensifying the
flow of ice into the ocean.
Kangerdlussuaq glacier alone contains enough ice to fill the Great Lakes four times if it melts completely. |
