[ad_1]
Since 1972, the Greenland icecap has lost the equivalent of trillions of tons of fresh water from its ice reserves, raising the world's sea level by a quarter of an inch in just eight years, and the rate of ice loss accelerates.
Trillions of tons of ice lost in Greenland's threatened ice cap
According to a study published this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the rate of loss of the icecap of the main ice sheet of Greenland is even worse and more terrifying than previously thought.
RELATED: A GLOBAL REPORT WARNS UNDER 12 YEARS AGO TO ACTION AGAINST CLIMATE CHANGE
Using data dating back another 20 years from our current models, the amount of freshwater ice lost by the Greenland Ice Cap since 1972 is trillions of tonnes of ice melting in the ocean.
Specifically, it has lost 4,966 gigatonnes of water since 1972. A gigaton equals 1 billion metric tons, which means that on average, enough melted water from the ice cap of the Greenland every year to meet the current needs of New York or the city. Los Angeles for a century.
Unfortunately, the loss of ice do not have evenly distributed over this period. Instead, the rate of loss has accelerated, with half of the ice loss occurring in the last decade alone. The speed at which glaciers move the mass of the icecap into the oceans is almost twice that of the 2000s.
The size of Greenland's icecap shows the severity of the crisis we are facing
Robinson Meyer's recent report in the Atlantic on recently published research gives an appropriate idea of the size of the Greenland icecap and what we risk to release if we do not reverse the rate of ice loss.
If the southern end of Greenland's icecap covered the southernmost city of the state of Texas, Brownsville, the tenth north of the ice cap would extend into the province of Manitoba, Canada, and that its easternmost boundary extended to its northwestern expanse extending to Montana.
The central point would be near Des Moines, Iowa, and would be about three kilometers thick. 65 million people would be crushed from below, about one-fifth of the US population, although this is largely due to the fact that the inner regions of the state are less populated than coastal cities, where large centers reside of population.
With enough fresh water to fill the North American Great Lakes more than 100 times, the complete melting of the Greenland icecap would add 24 feet to sea level. Even ten meters of sea level rise directly threaten New York, much of Florida and hundreds of other cities in the United States.
Miami presents an overview of our climate future
Here in the United States, there is growing awareness that the city of Miami may have to be abandoned during the century. Sitting on a limestone bedrock, efforts to build dikes around endangered areas will do nothing to stop the water, which will simply cross the limestone like a sponge and climb back to the other side.
At present, Miami is already experiencing floods every time it rains and the city is trying to raise roads at least two feet above the high tide line and also requires new construction. lie at least one foot above this line. The existing construction will have to be connected to a network of pumps to control the floods that invade these higher ramparts against the seas. All this has cost hundreds of millions of dollars for the only city in Miami Beach.
"Only 3% of Miami-Dade County residents are more than 12 feet above sea level," said Harold Wanless, director of the Department of Geological Sciences at the University of Miami-Dade. Miami and specialist in the rise of the sea level and its implications. The sea level rises to more than one foot per decade, it's over. By the end of the century, the entire county encompassing the city of Miami will be functionally uninhabitable and they are not alone.
Of the 40 major cities where more than half of its area is less than 10 feet from sea level, 27 are in Florida alone. In New York, 700,000 current residents will be submerged by a 10-foot sea level rise. Hundreds of cities in the United States alone will be directly affected by a 10-foot sea level rise, which is now guaranteed due to the collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. The only question now is how quickly we will experience this increase.
With the acceleration seen in Greenland, it is probably the same for the Antarctic, which alone holds a sea level rise of about 200 feet. As the rate of melting of these two endangered ice reserves accelerates, the consequences of human-caused climate change will no longer be a crisis for the distant future. but will lie squarely at the heart of the lives of those who are currently living. This makes it a problem that only the current generation can solve.
[ad_2]
Source link