Two huge ice sheets around the world are at greater risk from global warming than previously thought, a study published May 20 says.
How has President Trump influenced climate change policies so far?
Since taking office, President Trump has abandoned efforts to reduce global warming. It could be “more generational to repair damage.”
A study published on May 20th shows that the huge ice spread melts surprisingly quickly, raising new concerns about “devastating consequences for humanity.”
This study focuses on two ice blocks currently sitting on land. The ice sheets of Antarctica and Greenland. As temperatures rise, the ice melts and flows into the ocean, causing sea levels to rise.
Although changes in sea level rise are often measured in centimeters or inches, the melting potential of the ice in these sheets can raise sea level by several dozen feet.
The authors warn in a study published in the journal Communications Earth and Environment.
“Recent observations of satellite-based ice sheet mass losses have been a major awakening call for the entire scientific and policy community working on rising sea levels and its effects,” said Jonathan Bamber, a research co-author at the University of Bristol in the UK.
What is an ice sheet?
The ice sheet is a block of glacial ice that exceeds 20,000 square miles. Ice sheets once covered much of the northern hemisphere during the Ice Age. Currently, Earth has only two ice sheets. One spans across most of Greenland, the world’s largest island, and the other across Antarctica, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center.
The Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets contain more than 99% of land ice and more than 68% of the Earth’s freshwater.
Sea level is rising
The loss of ice in Greenland and Antarctic has already affected the seawater, raising sea levels around the world, NSIDC said. If global greenhouse gas emissions continue at current rates, the Earth’s ice sheet is vulnerable to even larger rapid ice losses that could significantly raise ocean levels.
New research shows that the mass of ice lost from these ice sheets has quadrupled since the 1990s, and now it has lost about 370 billion tons of ice per year.
Recovery can take thousands of years
Even when the planet returns to pre-industrial temperatures, it will take hundreds or even thousands of years for the ice sheet to recover. If there is too much ice, some of these ice sheets may not recover until the next ice age, research suggests.
“In other words, the rise in the ice sheet that has melted from the ice sheet will be lost for a very long time, so limiting warming is very important at first,” said Rob DeConte, a research co-author at the University of Massachusetts Amherst University.
How hot is it?
The study suggests that world leaders should aim for one degree of warming) compared to global temperature over a century to avoid significant losses from ice sheets and prevent further acceleration of sea level rise.
It is a noble goal given that the 1.5° C-threshold has long been debated as a difficult yet attainable goal. (The threshold was exceeded last year, so hope is fleeting about that goal).
“There is growing evidence that 1.5 degrees is too high for the ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica,” said Chris Stokes, the lead author of the Department of Geography at Durham University in the UK, in a statement. “We have long known that sea level rise is inevitable for decades over centuries, but the recent observation of ice sheet losses is surprising, even under current climatic conditions.”
