Models of sea level rise based on our understanding of how Earth’s ice sheets respond to a warming atmosphere could be incorrect, a new study has found.
Models of sea level rise based on our understanding of how Earth’s ice sheets respond to a warming atmosphere could be incorrect, a new study has found. This could have significant implications for future predictions of global sea level rise from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets.
Climate change is resulting in sea level rise as oceans expand and ice on land melts. How much and how fast sea level will rise in the current period of human-induced increased warming depends in part on how Earth’s ice sheets in Greenland and the Antarctic change their flow speeds in response to a warming atmosphere.
A new study, carried out in collaboration between Oxford University’s Earth Science department, the Oxford University Mathematical Institute, and Columbia University has shown that predictions of the impact of melting on Greenland tidewater glacier speeds could be incorrect, with implications for future predictions of global sea level rise from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets.
Laura Stevens, Associate Professor of Climate and Earth Surface Processes, and her colleagues used Global Positioning System (GPS) observations of the flow speed of Helheim Glacier—the largest single-glacier contributor to sea level rise in Greenland—and captured a near perfect natural experiment: high-temporal-resolution observations of the glacier’s flow response to a supraglacial lake drainage.
Read more at University of Oxford
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