Established scientific doctrine since Victorian times, claims that the world will see only 18 cm sea level rise by year 2100 if the peer-reviewed literature’s well-recorded melt water runoff and sea water expansion figures are used. But the Environmental Parliament disagrees with this old dogma and says that if the glacier melt is unknown, and other non linear and unrecorded phenomena are included in our modeling, then the sea level rises appear that will be far higher, far more quick and quite possibly up to several meters in the next few years…
Because the vast unpredictability of the Greenland glacier’s collapse is the real unknown in the Climate Change debate because it will affect adversely hundreds of millions of people and shift billions of us into new areas, placing our development in reverse and might even place the very human species existence in peril.
Science is simple and arithmetic doesn’t lie. Climate change caused sea level risings are our new reality. We get to live and die by it and as Secretary General of the United Nations Ban Ki-moon says: “the evidence of global warming is lapping at our feet.” Our coastal cities where two thirds of humanity live are threatened, and it could all happen very suddenly. Maybe the Greenland ice shelf collapse will happen in the space of a decade or a weekend, in a year or in a night or even in a few hours and then You’ll find yourself in peril. Under water like during Katrina in New Orleans, or from Irene in New Jersey — without enough time to build an Ark or run for shelter, or swim to the closest dinghy or climb the closest mountain to save your family.
And since we are not all living in the Scottish Highlands and because nobody really knows the day when this might happen, shouldn’t we start be doing something about it?
Methinks we should. Mainly because only two years after the Environmental Parliament held it’s world renown Greenland Glacier Summit in Copenhagen and exactly as the assembled scientists predicted this, the largest of Greenlands’ ice shelves – the Petermann glacier – has now collapsed.
The ‘Gob-smacking’ scale of Petermann Glacier break-up is now revealed and the news is rather grim.
The photos of the Petermann Glacier that were taken two years apart, the latest one in July 2011 and the previous one in the summer of 2009 show this immense loss. A two year change and not a two centuries or a two millennia change as the established Victorian era glacial science would have us believe that could have predicted… This happened in the space of two years and it could happen in the space of two days too…
http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/55149000/jpg/_55149193_glacier464comp.jpg
Greenland’s ice sheet future is decidedly ‘grim’
And this new study looks at the ice sheet threat and on how fast Greenland ice loss is constantly ‘accelerating’
New pictures have revealed the extent to which a huge glacier in northern Greenland has broken up in just two years, claims the glaciologist.
Dr Alun Hubbard of Aberystwyth University said he was “gob-smacked” by the scale of the Petermann Glacier’s break-up since he last visited in 2009.
The glacier is 186 miles (300km) long and 3,280ft (1000m) high – over three times the height of the Eiffel Tower.
Last year, it shed a piece of ice measuring 77 square miles (200 sq km).
Dr Hubbard has been researching the Greenland ice sheet for some years.
His team of researchers and scientists from Aberystwyth and Swansea universities have made several trips to the country.
Located in north west Greenland, the Petermann Glacier accounts for 6% of the area of the Greenland ice sheet.
“It’s like looking into the Grand Canyon full of ice and coming back two years later to find it’s full of water”
So said Dr Alun Hubbard of Aberystwyth University:
It terminates as a floating tongue of ice, measuring around 43 miles (70km) long by 12 miles (20km) wide, the largest of its kind in the northern hemisphere.
“Although I knew what to expect in terms of ice loss from satellite imagery, I was still completely unprepared for the gob-smacking scale of the break-up, which rendered me speechless,” said Dr Hubbard.
“It was incredible to see. This glacier is huge, 20km across and 1000m high.
“It’s like looking into the Grand Canyon full of ice and coming back two years later to find it’s full of water.”
He said data recovered from global positioning system (GPS) sensors at the site was being analysed at Aberystwyth.
With support from the US National Science Foundation, the Environmental Parliament and the Natural Environment Research Council in the UK, Dr Hubbard travelled by helicopter to the glacier to gather data from time lapse cameras and GPS sensors set up in July and August 2009, with the help of Greenpeace.
The GPS sensors were set in anticipation of a large break-up of ice that eventually occurred on the 3rd of August, 2010.
Dr Hubbard said this led to the formation of an ice island measuring more than 77 square miles (200 sq km).
He believes the cracks and rifts in what remains of the ice shelf means it is also likely to break up at some point in the near future.
Dr Hubbard visited the Petermann glacier at the end of July, and returns to Aberystwyth on Sunday.
His work is part of a wider project involving researchers from Bristol, Cambridge, Edinburgh, Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands, Germany and the United States.
And in the ice shelf break up or melt away or even the sudden collapse – as is this case of the glacier collapse – the mechanics of it are rather simple as explained by the incoming new Environmental Parliament Chief Scientist Dr Albert Kallio who had this analysis for the phenomena:
“The water accummulation loosens the ice dome from its subglacial base. Whilst the build up of events to the situation is observable, the actual moment is not, because it happens just like in an ice avalanche, and it is likely to be impossible to know. In ice avalanches the springtime melt water penetrates to the rock surfaces loosening the blocks of ice and triggering an avalanche. No one will know when the last drop of water is in place to trigger the slide out. Will you know when is the moment the ice falls from your house roof (assuming you have a crested, not flat roof)? Ice is very slippery by nature and once it is moving, it generates its own heat and melt water results. The build up of internal pressures within Greenland ice sheet is visible as the throughput volumes of ice in the ice fjords are constantly growing there. Only devil knows when there is enough pressure and damage made onto the mooring of the ice on bedrocks to generate the ice sheet thrust to rupture the weak perimeter at Melville Bay (north west Greenland coastal depression zone where many subsea rockfalls are seen happened in the past). My expectation is that the marine ice cap on the North Pole will have to disappear first before melt water, rain and ice thinning destabilise the terrestrial ice sheet by sea water seepages or subglacial lava floods, but that is just my guess.”
“Greenland contributes to sea level rise in three ways:
(1) the ice displacement drives up an equivalent weight of water (compressed snow is slightly more bulky than sea water),
(2) the dissipation of perennial ice dome tide that surrounds Greenland which pulls sea water away from coasts of Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, France, Portugal etc. The loss of ice dome in Greenland may drain the ports of Greenland and Iceland from water as the gravity field that has been pulling water there dissipates. Thus, the ships could find themselves lying on dry grounds on sea ports there. The volumetric average sea rise is 5-7 metres from ice sheet depending how complete its fragmentation and fall into sea ice is. An additional 20-40% sea level rise about 2-4 metres comes from the dissipation of gravity field (including redirected impact points of the ocean currents, and changes in tilt of the earth’s axis). In total with near 100% failure ocean rises 7 metres volumetically, plus 4 metres due to dissipation of gravity fields etc associated with the ice dome’s attraction of sea water towards it.
(3) There is also a teleconnection to the Ronne and Ross Ice Shelves in Antarctica as any tongue of water penetrating under their ice shelves would bend the ice shelve that floats on continental margin and snaps it. This loosens the ice shelve as free-floating bergs into the ocean which allows the ice congestion behind these ice shelves to drain into the ocean far more easily. A major failure could also trigger sea rises with seepages of sea water under Antarctica where bed rocks lie beneath the sea level and also trigger ice-volcano adjustments that pour lava under the ice sheets there. A major failure in Greenland is always a bipolar event risking greater sea level jump than Greenland alone is able to do. How much ice comes from the Antarctican resposes no one can even guess but this coupling ice loss could also be very severe.”
“This glacier is dangerous because it behaves like the edge of the porridge plate. The edge of the plate is above sea level, but the bottom of the breakfast bowl, is below sea level. The tall ice has been forming a tight plug preventing the water running into this bowl in interior Greenland. If the ice thins further and its edge retreats, the bowl starts drinking sea water and fills up, This is because salty sea water is far heavier than the compressed snow that fills the bowl. Sea water takes the heat with it and melts this compacted snow, given right conditions, the sealing of remaining ice may be exceeded by perssure of sea water incursion. It will be a mighty river inland when Petermann starts gulping water in. If the basins get filled with sea water, it obviously lifts the ice higher and off the grounds and then the ice pressure in Greenland ice sheets exceed the ice holding capacity of Melville Bay coastal barrier. A new Heindrich Ice Berg Calving event results, followed by sea level jump, and the sudden cooling of the ocean and atmosphere as ocean fills up with ice. Tropical regions will see lack of monsoon rains as ice filled oceans mop up moisture from the air in a hydrological cycle reversal. So, failure of the ice sealing in Petermann Glaicer is pretty dangerous.”
“The reason for sealing is the ice fjord terminus, debris and breaking ice makes the bottom profile to rise close to sea surface as ice breaks and debris falls off. But bit more inland, the force of ice has carved the bottom profile much deeper. For example in Ilulissat Ice Fjord that is the next largest active ice fjord (Melville Bay is below its potential), the bottom profile falls from few hundred meters as far below sea level than 1,500 metres. There a similar ice plugging failure will also occur once the ice thins and retreats too far back so that the water falls in this abyss.”
Yours,
Pano
PS:
Veli Albert Kallio the new Environmental Parliament Chief Scientist and Science Media Centre Director had this to say: “Altogether there are 4 processes attacking Greenland: 1) thinning outlet glaciers like Petermann and Ilulissat Ice Fjords that start leaking sea water in over the edge as ice height on the edge no longer is heavy enough to press ice tighth enough against seafloor. 2) the warmer climate that melts sea ice more extensively draining water from surface under the subglacial pot holes and cavities within ice, making ice footing on ground unstable, warmed and wet ice soft, heavy and slippery. 3) the flash-floods of water onto the ice as the oceans around Greenland have opened and warmed. 4) the ice-volcano interactions that result from wet solidus damage where wet solidus nucleates out dissolved hydrogen and oxygen out of magma rocks sending volcanic plumes through the crust to rise beneath melted glaciers like Eyjafjallajokull, thus melting ice near instaneously. I gave at CMPCC summit a TV interview about this that can be seen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSpCbn8JDvM
The Link Between Receding Glaciers and Natural Disasters
www.youtube.com
http://SupremeMasterTV.com/—PLANET EARTH: OUR LOVING HOME Veli Albert Kallio: The Link Between Receding Glaciers and Natural Disasters. Episode: 1392, Air Dat…”
And for those of you strong willed enough to read this to the end, your reward is these fantastically beautiful photos of Greenland:
http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2011/08/icy-greenland/100135/
