Sea Level Rise
Tidewater Glaciers Melting Faster Than Expected
Alaska's LeConte Glacier is melting underwater at rates nearly a hundred times greater than what is currently estimated, according to a detailed sonar survey of the glacier's submerged surfaces.
The newly observed melt rates are up to two orders of magnitude greater than those calculated by some current predictive models. The findings, published in the July 26 issue of Science, are the first based on direct subsurface measurements of a tidewater glacier and suggest that similar glaciers worldwide may be in far "hotter water" than previously known. "Beyond proving that [the method] is doable, we found that melt rates over most of the glacier were extremely high compared to those predicted by theory," said Sutherland, and that they changed seasonally, increasing from spring to summer. For example, melt rates based on these direct observations suggest melt rates of more than eight meters per day in August, whereas theoretical models predict a single meter of daily change.
Based on the physics of ice melt along the ice-ocean interface, Sutherland is confident that similar submarine melt is occurring elsewhere, particularly at the far larger tidewater glaciers in Greenland or west Antarctic Peninsula.
Greenland unraveling rapidly as feedback loops bring the ice sheet closer to the tipping point
DailyKos Greenland Melting 5/06/2019
Feedback loops make the problem of a warming Arctic that much worse and according to Thomas Growther, a professor at the Department of Environmental Systems Science of ETH Zurich, “It’s already begun, the feedback is in process”. Yahoo news, reports that “carbon dioxide and methane emissions from thawing soils are “accelerating climate change about 12 to 15 percent at the moment,” and said past IPCC reports that left out the feedback “were way more optimistic than they should have been.”
