News
Bad News for Florida: Models of Greenland Ice Melting Could Be Way Off
December 15, 2014
NBC News | December 15, 2014
The mix of IPCC models have Greenland contributing 8.7 inches to global sea level rise by 2100 without the doubling of supraglacial lakes, but the team fears that a doubling could add almost as much as that over the next century.
Such a rise in sea level would have serious repercussions for heavily populated low-lying areas, like Florida or Bangladesh, which could see beach and barrier island erosion and salt water encroachment, scientists say.
The glaciers study, published in the peer-reviewed Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, used NASA satellite data to reconstruct how the height of the ice sheet has changed at nearly 100,000 locations from 1993 to 2012.
The team found significant variations that aren’t factored in by existing computer models for future changes on Greenland because they focus on just four glaciers.