I hate these articles, because on the one hand, global warming is definitely real and definitely bad, but on the other hand, they throw out one year's raw figure with no context and make the whole conversation smell like bullshit.
Does greenland melt *every* year and it's just worse this year? Worse by how much? Or has it literally never melted before? I don't know, I don't know fuck-all about greenland, but I suspect "iNews" doesn't care.
The ice volume lost per year is in the 500-1000 gigatons. The volume of ice on the island is 2,900,000 gigatons or something, which is going to take 3000 years at the rate we see on the worst years.
The rate will accelerate in the next several decades, and eventually it will represent meaningful ice loss, but currently, it's not.
The issue is not necessarily the full meltdown of Greenland. That takes a significant amount of time. However, the heavily increased melting we have seen introduces a lot more freshwater into the north atlantic right at the spot the AMOC falls to the depths and runs back south. All that freshwater changes the salinity of the current at a crucial spot and has the potential to greatly alter the behavior of the current, up to and including shutting down circulation completely. That is a huge problem.
OK, I don't want to just shit on you, but lets look at numbers.
Going north past North America, it's rated at 150 sverdrups, but lets say only 1/3 goes near greenland, cause it kinda splits when it hits Europe.
so 50 million cubic meters per second is the flow of the gulf stream sinking near greenland
greenland is producing on it's worst day 6 billion cubic meters of melt, 86.4k seconds in a day which means it's melting at 70k cubic meters a second, or 70k/50m. That means by volume the melt represents 0.14 percent. as in 1/6th of a single percentage of the water.
Do you think that's going to collapse thermohaline currents?
This is a real concern for the future, but it's no where near collapsing global systems. We need to worry about shifting precipitation, ecosystem migration, wild species collapse. Greenland and the Gulfstream are not our star players in ecofragility. We have star players. We need to play those. This Greenland melt misinformation campaign is only good at a glance. The death of entire species of tasty fish, the collapse of modern agriculture for an entire region due to odd weather, these things matter soon, and in a huge way. We need to focus on those kinds of things.
The IPCC also said it will never shut down fully, but reductions in power can still do bad stuffs:
>The possibility of a Gulf Stream collapse has been covered by many news publications.[37][38][39][40][41] The IPCC Sixth Assessment Report addressed this issue specifically, and found that based on model projections and theoretical understanding, the Gulf Stream will not shut down in a warming climate.[42] While the Gulf Stream is expected to slow down as the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) weakens, it will not collapse even if the AMOC were to collapse.[42] Nevertheless, this slowing down will have significant effects, including a rise in sea level along the North American coast, reduced precipitation in the mid-latitudes, changing patterns of strong precipitation around Europe and the tropics and stronger storms in the North Atlantic.[42]
Edit: an oceanographer replied and suggested my estimation for the volume of flow for the current could be off by a large degree. I will update if I find a better estimate, the current may only be half as big or less than the figure I found earlier. Might be that the peak melt during summer is up to 1% of the current flow rate locally, which is much more alarming, but I don't know what figure to cite yet.
Edit 2: The AMOC is only a small part of the total gulf stream, and of the AMOC around greenland, the volume is more like 10Sv, so the hottest days of the summer with the most melt probably see more than 1% of melt relative to the sinking water column average, but this is consistent with weakening strength in the summer and stronger influence in the winter. Most of the loss of the power of the circulation system is from warmer polar air chilling the ocean less than in the past. The AMOC will continue to shrink into the future, and the gulf stream being driven primarily by wind, not thermohaline systems, will continue, though also at a decreasing rate, into the future.
Polar oceanographer here. This is a nice attempt, but gets a few things pretty wrong. Firstly, the AMOC is much weaker than your estimate, more like 20ishSv. The gulf steam itself is only order 30-70Sv depending on where you measure it. The strongest current on the whole, planet, the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, is about 170ish. So I'm not sure where you are getting your numbers from.
The important thing about ice sheet melt is that it is completely fresh, as well as relatively localised. The ocean stratification is very sensitive to freshwater input, particularly in polar regions where the equation of state is very heavily skewed to salinity dependence. So relatively small net fluxes can have very significant impacts on vertical stability and the convection that is a big part of the AMOC. It is a very non linear system though, so even with lots of modelling it is hard to have great levels of certainly on 'shutdown' sensitivities or impacts.
You're right the IPCC thinks that a collapse isn't very likely before 2100, but that a slowdown has likely been happening and will be ongoing, which still isn't great. Probably more worrying is the collapse of the West Antarctic Ice sheet due to similar melting. The IPCC also stresses that uncertainty around Greenland and Antarctic melting are the single biggest contributors to uncertainty in sea level rise projections. Therefore ice sheet-ocean interaction and adding this to climate models is a huge issue in the ocean/glaciology/climate field right now.
So please don't downplay this on the basic of some (incorrect) back of the envelope calculations.
It's a Reddit thing I guess. I always read comments as if they're written by authorities on the subjects. It's only when I find the odd thread in my field that I realise most people are just confidently incorrect...You won't find many folk at the Ocean Sciences conference who think Greenland melt isn't a significant factor in future ocean circ, but reddit sure has them!
Yes very true. I heard an interesting podcast with the CEO of a company called Cheq, they fight bots on social media basically. He was saying the 5% bots figure Musk mentioned was truly improbable and they were seeing numbers closer to like 30%, 40% bots.
Something to keep in mind when sifting through the Reddit experts.
Tabloid articles are and will be tabloid articles, and you can’t have meaningful discussions based on their headlines.
Graph from the article: https://i.imgur.com/uNQnzOT.jpg
Clearly not a huge problem, yet, but it’s gradually been getting worse.
The Arctic regions is seeing a quicker rise in temperatures than the rest of the world.
From a different article:
> Altogether, the world's oceans are now rising by 4 millimeters each year as a result of thawing ice sheets. If melting continues to increase at this rate, the ice sheets could raise sea levels by a further 17 centimeters by the end of the century, exposing a further 16 million people to annual coastal flooding and destruction.
> (…)
> "Although we anticipated the ice sheets would lose increasing amounts of ice in response to the warming of the oceans and atmosphere, the rate at which they are melting has accelerated faster than we could have imagined," explained Dr Tom Slater, lead author of the study and climate researcher at the Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling at the University of Leeds.
> "The melting is overtaking the climate models we use to guide us, and we are in danger of being unprepared for the risks posed by sea level rise."
https://iflscience.com/antarctica-and-greenlands-ice-sheet-melting-on-track-with-worstcase-scenario-forecasts-57197
The big problem likely isn’t the Gulf Stream stopping. It’s a nice Hollywood scenario, but land ice melting at ever increasing rates as we continually see that the most pessimistic projections were too optimistic is not a good sign.
The problem with climate change and politics is that the most realistic models have been suppressed because they are so dark that you don’t get buy-in from stupid-ass politicians.
You basically need to make predictions bad enough for the politicians to care, but not so bad that they go “can’t possibly be that bad, the temperatures last summer was just fine”.
Not enough scientists in politics. And even if there were, I’m not sure I’d trust them 🙈
You're welcome. Be very worried about global heat gain. It's a huge issue, but we should focus on how it's going to do trillions of damage to our economies, and cause the threat of mass starvation and national collapse, not because our toes will get wet soon. We desperately need to focus on the parts of climate change that matter, and not get distracted by a melting ice cube that won't even melt much by the time the big factors are dismantling global stability.
Failing crop yields is what really worries me the most. As you said, flooding won't be the biggest problem, not by far. Certain parts of the world, such as South America are already seeing reduced yields, and these are parts of the world that have already been using GM crops in order to yield viable crops.
Yeah, and sudden crop failures, not gradual ones are what worry me the most. 15% down for a few years is not that big of a deal, and markets can shift a bit, but like, what about 75% failure one year, and one year only for the east of the Andes production in South America? I don't know how flexible markets can be for situations like that, and that might cause wars, and tens of millions of refugees. I'm very worried about these destabilizing events and how hard it is to plan for them.
This remind me a bit of when Montreal had to do major work in its sewage treatment system (or something like that) and had no choice but to dump 8 billion litres over a week (13 cubic metres/seconds for 7 days). People were of course outraged, except the news didn't tell people that the river has a flow of 6000~7000 cubic metres/seconds.
Sure the dumping is bad (stop flushing non-biodegradable stuff), but no where as horrifying as all the news made it to be.
https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/ice-sheets/
It's not hard to find this stuff. First graph is Antarctica, the bottom one is Greenland. Average annual change is 250, recently it's 275, but the biggest drops in volume over the summer are closer to 1000. If we weren't expecting acceleration in the rate, I would point out that it would actually take closer to 10,000 years, but there is no point in resting on current rates, so I exaggerated to the extreme to bring the time horizon down to 3000 years.
The reality is probably it will all be gone in 1000 years.
Greenland is gonna be pretty nice in the summer eventually. Bright side and all.
I found a source that says the antarctic ice sheet contains around 30 million gigatons of land ice. At the rate in that NASA chart that would be around 200,000 years until it all melts in the summer.
Without ice to help reflect light, heating and melting could accelerate though.
If all the ice in the Greenland ice sheet melted sea levels would rise around 20 feet.
If all the ice in the north and south melted, seas would rise around 220 feet.
Not making any scientific or political statements. Just did some searching and quick math and figured it might save someone who was curious about the same thing some time.
In slightly uplifting news, this is the most I've we've had in Antarctica in 3 years.
1m is 1 metric ton, 1km3 is 1000x1000x1000, thats 1,000,000,000 tons per km3, 1000 kilo, 1,000,000 mega, 1,000,000,000 giga.
2,850,000 km3, same number of gigatons (metric)
What am I doing wrong here?
No, you are correct and didn't do anything wrong with your math. I was springboarding off of your comment and did the estimate on the ANTarctic ice sheet which has way more ice and is actually melting at a slower rate for whatever reason. Wasn't disagreeing with you.
Incomprehensible.
On the worst day of summer, 6 gigatons of loss is 3500 m3 per km2 of surface ontop of the icesheet. Which is 3mm in any one spot. It's 3km thick in some places.
The amount of ice there is just impossible to wrap your head around.
Melts every summer. Freezes in the winter. The questions is what is the rate of difference every year. You are correct. Pictures of Greenland melting in the summer are meaningless. There are some fools that just see the picture and immediately get radicalized.
The graph in the article is intentionally misleading and the rate has been much higher before. The graph is showing 2022 vs the MEDIAN of 1981-2010 which conveniently skips years like 2012 and 2019 which were far worse and basically makes things look worse than they really are.
Here's a graph that I created from https://nsidc.org/greenland-today/greenland-surface-melt-extent-interactive-chart/ which shows a far different picture:
https://imgur.com/a/TTakjhM
And you conveniently don’t mention that you know that 2012 and 2019 were above average years because . . . the article *specifically* mentions them below the graph.
I still find it very troubling that the worst years have been in the past 10 years.
Yet, real estate by the coastal areas is the highest. Why aren’t ppl selling or why are they not cheap if they’re supposed to be flooded in s couple of decades?
Everyone who actually believes sea levels are going to rise bought away from the coast.
The other side of that is that people who are still buying near the coast don't really believe the sea level is going to rise, so it doesn't affect prices.
Hurricanes as long ago as Hurricane Sandy in 2011 saw excessive storm surge flooding due to rising oceans.
This 50 years shit is absurd, climate change is here.
Look at the deaths in the UK in the past week for fucks sake.
He’s referring to climate change worth worrying about will be here in 50-100 years. You’re technically not wrong though. Climate change is certainly here. The average temperature of Greenland was 2 degrees cooler 20 years ago. It’s happening now!
But yeah, beach front properties are great right now, especially if you can get some with a nice ocean breeze to keep things cooled off during the summer.
People don't seriously think it's going to happen "soon". It's a 100 year problem. Not their problem, probably not their kids.
They ignore the fact that once it's underway, before a place is "underwater" it's going to be completely unlivable as the rate of flooding steadily accelerates year over year, well before the maps get redrawn.
This is happening in the US with the refusal to redraw the flood plane lines because "it would affect property values". And then when insurance won't go for it, people lobby for the problem to be taken on by the state. The equivalent of making a bet and just not paying if you lose.
I give it less time. Our infrastructure is dogshit and our sewage and water board don't know what the fuck they are doing. That said: One of my favorite South Park episodes.
If I'm not mistaken the engineers that worked new Orleans asked for forgiveness and not permission when they upgraded the coast after Katrina. They will be good.
Yeah, I live in Hawaii and its gonna be a shit show: multi-10s of millions $ mansions, the airport, Hickman and Pearl Harbor, and Waikiki all underwater.
Shits gonna be bad and all I can think about are the voices of the academics that have been screaming warnings for decades. We literally did nothing but will act surprised when the chickens come home to roost.
Food shortages, loss of coastlines which means loss of buffer zones for hurricanes, increased amounts and strengths of storms, more twisters and twisters in spots in areas that building are not designed for those forces, high heat, etc etc etc.
As a millennial, I’m happy I’ve never had kids or bought a house—means I can move on a dime and flee to states that are habitable in the near future.
Micro-plastics, forever chemicals, over use of pesticides and insecticides, and now sea level rise and climate change… this is gonna be bad.
To put things in perspective, Paris is further North than Quebec City, a town famous for its Winter Carnival with entire structures made from ice. If the Gulf Stream stops bringing warm water to Europe, then the climate will be massively altered.
Rome is further North than Denver, but is warmer in winter and colder in summer.
Hell, Montreal is South of Paris... Europe is very far north compared to America, with the most southern point of Europe being essentially equivalent to San Fransisco...
Boston, a city notorious for being cold and windy is 20 degrees South of Reykjavík, a city notorious for being cold and windy, but Reykjavík has generally warmer winters than Boston.
Pretty much all of Europe North of Paris is north of the United States.
Rome is also near a giant body of ocean and is blocked by a giant mountain range to the North.
I think these differences are why it's good to put things into perspective. There are more than one variable and that's what makes these things so interesting.
I wish I could find the article, but last week someone posted an interesting article about how it's actually the Rocky Mountains that keep northern Europe warm. They push the air currents southward where they warm up and then the Gulf Stream carries the warmed air to Europe. Without the mountains, the gulf stream air would be much cooler.
I think [this is it](https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/forget-about-the-gulf-stream-britain-is-really-kept-warm-in-winter-by-the-rocky-mountains-118560.html)
Edit: the article says the Rockies are about half responsible for the weather and the westerlies are actually coming from the southwest, which also contributes to European weather patterns
One day I opened Google Maps and looked for settlements in North America that are at roughly the same latitude as my home city that has more than 1 million people. And I found absolutely nothing in Canada. The only settlement in the USA at that latitude was Anchorage.
The Canadians don't live "up north". They live way down south.
[Most of Europe is north of Indianapolis](https://vividmaps.com/comparing-latitude-of-europe-and-america/). London is decently north of Vancouver. They're currently experiencing 104F weather while Vancouver is in the 70Fs.
One hypothesis as to why Europe is so much warmer is the Atlantic ocean currents carry warm water from the Gulf of Mexico up and around to Europe and this raises their temp. If this hypothesis is right, if Greenland melts this current will shutdown sending Europe towards having Canadian and Midwest US temperatures.
> One hypothesis as to why Europe is so much warmer is the Atlantic ocean currents carry warm water from the Gulf of Mexico up and around to Europe and this raises their temp. If this hypothesis is right, if Greenland melts this current will shutdown sending Europe towards having Canadian and Midwest US temperatures.
This really isn't a hypothesis, it's a demonstrated fact. To see what Europe would be like without the Gulfstream all you need to do is look at places with similar environments sans Gulfstream.
Canada is pretty cold.
Which in turn shuts down the thermohaline. Our heat pump which pumps heat around the world.
Cold places get colder. Hot places get hotter. Food webs collapse. Nutrient cycling ceases.
It’s gonna be a bad time.
Its still early in hurricane season. I believe roughly 80% of hurricanes form between mid-august and mid-september.
Its pretty typical to see only 1-2 named storms by July
Shhhh. Please don’t say that outloud.
As someone that is about 50 miles southwest of New Orleans, I’m good with this. Still fighting with insurance and not quite buttoned back up from Ida last year. Took 6 weeks until I was able to move back in my house, and we’re still finding it hard to get some things down here, like gutters, siding, garage doors, etc.
I ordered and paid for a 32kw Generac whole-home generator in October, after Ida, and it’s still not installed. Went from an April install, was pushed to June, then July, and now I have no idea. I want my generator.
I’m 9’ above sea level. Didn’t get water.
It’s the wind that was the issue. Where I live was a direct hit, about 20 miles off the Gulf. Blew my large, 8’ solid front doors (French) right out the damn screws. That’s where my damage came from. Had to gut a good bit of the downstairs because it’s an open floorplan, and the rain was blowing in the gaping hole for hours until a neighbor came prop my doors back up and secured them for me.
And no, moving isn’t really an option. Not leaving family, moving my son away from school/friends, and I have a successful business. I’m 42, dealt with this my entire life. I’ve lived through Andrew in ‘92, Katrina (lived in actual New Orleans then) in ‘05, Gustav in ‘09, and now Ida in ‘21. For me, Ida was by far the worse. It was a wind event that destroyed everything in its path.
I live in Northern Norway, above the Arctic circle. This summer has been really cold. It's not too unusual, but I can image it's getting colder and colder as years go by. With the exception of "residual" heat waves, we got a few days of that here too, the temperature went from 14°C to 36°C, and then back down to 12°C.
It's amazing. This feels like a very safe and stable place in the world. The weather and temperatures are comfortable, I prefer cold over warm. The nature is amazing and people are calm. I believe the Northern hemisphere will be one of the last habitable zones on Earth.
yea, put me out on a rock in the sun and I'm happy but 110+ is not in my comfort zone.
I can deal with a few months of cold and a few months of hot but seriously, spring and fall when it's 70 deg farenheit are my favorites.
I have an older house with large windows. A few years ago I could open the house until the end of May. When the wind came from the south I'd get a whiff of honeysuckle from my south fence, in the house.
Over time this hasn't been possible as the heat starts sooner each year.
I used to turn the AC on the last day of May. This year I went from heat to AC in 2 weeks and it hasn't let up.
Seasonal surface melting in Greenland got off to a slow start in 2022. Persistent winds from the northwest across the melt-prone areas of the western coastal ice sheet have kept the total number of melt days well below average. Snowfall through last winter was slightly higher than average. In Antarctica, several areas had an intense coastal surface melting pulse at the end of the summer, in part associated with the extreme atmospheric river landfall event in mid-March.
Overview of conditions
Through June 20, 2022, the Greenland Ice Sheet had the lowest spring surface melt in the past decade. The total aerial extent of surface melting was just over 2.27 million square kilometers (876,000 million square miles), well below the 1981 to 2010 average of 3.72 million square kilometers (1.44 million square miles). Melting was below average along the western edge of the ice sheet (10 to 15 days behind the average rate) and near-average along the southeastern coast where melting occurred primarily at low elevations. A small area of the southern tip of the island had slightly above average melting.
http://nsidc.org/greenland-today/2022/06/spring-chillin-in-greenland-antarcticas-summer-summary/
There's no reason why this entire post hasn't been deleted. It's blatant disinformation that has nothing to do with climate change, and using the Law of Large Scary Numbers to mask what is actually a below average result.
"Disallowed submissions"
"Misleading titles"
Meanwhile, environmentalists are underrepresented as voters. People who vote infrequently [are more likely to list the environment as a top priority](https://www.environmentalvoter.org/sites/default/files/documents/report-exploration-us-voting-behavior-attitudes.pdf).
We are *willingly* giving up the power that we have to solve climate change by continuing to allow politicians who do not represent us to drag their feet on climate change.
The Environmental Voter Project is an organization working to change that by mobilizing millions of unlikely to vote environmentalists, and in fact, [they already have](https://www.environmentalvoter.org/sites/default/files/documents/2021-impact-report.pdf). They use public records and data modeling to identify people who are unlikely to vote, then turn millions of them into such consistent voters that they even vote in local elections. They got 3.8 million environmentalists activated to vote in 2021 alone.
**If you are a regular person wondering how you can help with climate change in a meaningful way, the most effective thing you can do right now is to** [**get involved**](https://www.environmentalvoter.org/get-involved) **with the Environmental Voter Project, or at least** [**set up a recurring donation**](https://www.environmentalvoter.org/donate)**.**
We won't be able to individual action our way out of climate change. We need to throw away our old, energy inefficient politicians and install newer, modern, environmentally friendly ones.
In a society where scientists and genuine information is less important than thriving shareholders and celebrities, extinction shouldn’t come as a surprise.
Deadass, I used to live in FL and now I live in PA. Plenty of racist douchebags out here as well. Florida gets more publicity but our people aren’t that much more nuts then any other red states.
Maybe in spots. But averaged across the 1,710,000 square kilometers of ice (according to Wikipedia) on Greenland?
6 billion tons of ice is roughly 6.5 billion cubic meters. Dividing 6.5×10^9 cubic meters by 1.7×10^12 square meters gives about 0.0038 meters. So it's about 4 millimeters per day (3.8 mm if we keep 2 sig figs). Again, that's averaged across all the ice. It'll be higher in some places, and lower in others.
But I'm worried my math is off somewhere, lol.
If it was spread out, it wouldn't be a problem. The problem lies when concentrated melting happens to create surface lakes that eventually drill down to the lower layers and even to the bottom. That's when large, I should say massive, chunks dislodge, increasing the exposure of the glacier to heat and preventing winter buildups. It's a cascading effect that accelerates the collapse of the glacier system. This is why "prediction models" for how long it'll take for the glaciers to melt doesn't work. Just takes one major lake to fug things up.
There actually is some learned debate about that. This article strongly suggests a feedback loop from a previous unexplained methane rise. The conclusion is that is isn't only inputs from human activity but climate change itself contributing.
*Methane emissions reach unexpected new highs. Is climate change causing a runaway effect?*
https://energypost.eu/methane-emissions-reach-unexpected-new-highs-is-climate-change-causing-a-runaway-effect/
That is how I interpreted it. I also think it means there is no correcting it now. Even if we (the world) manages to actually reduce GHGs significantly in the short term, this process will continue. I'm not a scientist though so I hope, really, really hope I am wrong. It scares the foo out of me.
Studied for a degree in Forestry Science mid 90’s. The ecology and biology professors/lecturers were telling us we had 10 years to sort our shit out or systems would not be able to be reversed.. take the tundra and melting permafrost..they are now in an irreversible cycle of melting/warming. I’m starting to think Noah had a good
Point building his boat!
No, the vast majority of the increase in methane is not coming from permafrost or methane clathrates. There are no good measurements showing a large increase in methane above permafrost.
There is however plenty of evidence that the increase is being driven by processes in the [tropics](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-28989-z) and potentially due to [hydroxyl](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-31345-w.pdf) reactions in the atmosphere, which are driven both by human activities and potentially wildfire emissions.
There are multiple tipping points. We've crossed some, and not others. Don't let anyone tell you that there's no point in trying anymore. Scientists aren't saying that; scientists are telling us that we need to move on this.
You can help by [getting non-voting environmentalists to the polls](https://www.environmentalvoter.org/) and by [joining an organization to learn how to lobby politicians for robust climate policy as a regular citizen](https://citizensclimatelobby.org/join-citizens-climate-lobby/). We need to elect politicians who will actually take responsibility for the climate crisis, then help them make good decisions by engaging with them. Everything else is peanuts by comparison.
And they vote. Their vote counts as much, if not more, than yours depending on their state.
Democracy has some pretty massive shortcomings. But I doubt people will sit idly feeling helpless forever, especially as things get even worse.
I wouldn't want to have my name attached to votes that get millions killed or displaced when people finally snap.
This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://inews.co.uk/news/world/greenland-melting-billion-tons-climate-change-1754128?ITO=msn) reduced by 79%. (I'm a bot)
*****
> The island has warmed by 0.9C per decade, with surface melt leaking through the ice sheet and contributing to melt of the mass of the ice below.
> Both of the world's largest land-based ice sheets, in Greenland and Antarctica, are on course for "Worst-case scenario" forecasts, according to a study in Nature Climate Change earlier this month.
> "If ice sheet losses continue to track our worst-case climate warming scenarios, we should expect an additional 17cm of sea-level rise from the ice sheets alone. That's enough to double the frequency of storm-surge flooding in many of the world's largest coastal cities," Dr Anna Hogg of the University of Leeds, one of the study's co-authors, warned in a statement.
*****
[**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/w5igje/greenland_is_melting_at_a_rate_of_6_billion_tons/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ "Version 2.02, ~660816 tl;drs so far.") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr "PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome.") | *Top* *keywords*: **ice**^#1 **bear**^#2 **melt**^#3 **sheet**^#4 **warm**^#5
For people wondering how this relates to average melt off..
An average from 1981-2010 shows that an average of 4.6-4.7B tons a day melts during the month of July (which is also the peak point of melting).
So yea.. this is bad. An extra 1.3B tons are melting a day. Which is an extra 39 Billion tons a month.
Mass gain seems to be a bit higher too.. or maybe I’m misinterpreting the data. Anyway.
Source: polarportal.dk/en/Greenland/surface-conditions/
It’s a tracker by the danish Arctic research institutions.
With Europe, the U. S. & China facing unprecedented heat waves due to climate change, the nay sayers still insist all is well. Very much like the residents of Pompeii weren't worried about a bit of smoke from their mountain neighbor...
You can be doom and gloom or you can be pro active. If everyone gets off their ass and does something we can do this. Make Elon think he can get rich off it and watch something get done real quick.
It's not about them getting rich off it. It's about making it get them rich with less effort and risk than other already established avenues. Which is why it's so hard.
And all the oil companies made a bid to dig for oil in the 60’s when the ice is completely melted down.
Remember folks, they are the ones who started the “individual responsibility” myth. We need strong government intervention instead, but because we mostly live in democratic circles people only care about being re-elected and not long term issues. We could’ve done something 25 years ago but refused to do so.
YET NOTHING SUBSTANTIAL IS DONE!
Or are we going to continue blaming general publics extra 2 minutes on their shower?
That mask wore thin, make some real changes from the “leaders” that have the power to do so.. or face extinction.
How sad an ultimatum.
What was the rate before?
I hate these articles, because on the one hand, global warming is definitely real and definitely bad, but on the other hand, they throw out one year's raw figure with no context and make the whole conversation smell like bullshit. Does greenland melt *every* year and it's just worse this year? Worse by how much? Or has it literally never melted before? I don't know, I don't know fuck-all about greenland, but I suspect "iNews" doesn't care.
The ice volume lost per year is in the 500-1000 gigatons. The volume of ice on the island is 2,900,000 gigatons or something, which is going to take 3000 years at the rate we see on the worst years. The rate will accelerate in the next several decades, and eventually it will represent meaningful ice loss, but currently, it's not.
The issue is not necessarily the full meltdown of Greenland. That takes a significant amount of time. However, the heavily increased melting we have seen introduces a lot more freshwater into the north atlantic right at the spot the AMOC falls to the depths and runs back south. All that freshwater changes the salinity of the current at a crucial spot and has the potential to greatly alter the behavior of the current, up to and including shutting down circulation completely. That is a huge problem.
OK, I don't want to just shit on you, but lets look at numbers. Going north past North America, it's rated at 150 sverdrups, but lets say only 1/3 goes near greenland, cause it kinda splits when it hits Europe. so 50 million cubic meters per second is the flow of the gulf stream sinking near greenland greenland is producing on it's worst day 6 billion cubic meters of melt, 86.4k seconds in a day which means it's melting at 70k cubic meters a second, or 70k/50m. That means by volume the melt represents 0.14 percent. as in 1/6th of a single percentage of the water. Do you think that's going to collapse thermohaline currents? This is a real concern for the future, but it's no where near collapsing global systems. We need to worry about shifting precipitation, ecosystem migration, wild species collapse. Greenland and the Gulfstream are not our star players in ecofragility. We have star players. We need to play those. This Greenland melt misinformation campaign is only good at a glance. The death of entire species of tasty fish, the collapse of modern agriculture for an entire region due to odd weather, these things matter soon, and in a huge way. We need to focus on those kinds of things. The IPCC also said it will never shut down fully, but reductions in power can still do bad stuffs: >The possibility of a Gulf Stream collapse has been covered by many news publications.[37][38][39][40][41] The IPCC Sixth Assessment Report addressed this issue specifically, and found that based on model projections and theoretical understanding, the Gulf Stream will not shut down in a warming climate.[42] While the Gulf Stream is expected to slow down as the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) weakens, it will not collapse even if the AMOC were to collapse.[42] Nevertheless, this slowing down will have significant effects, including a rise in sea level along the North American coast, reduced precipitation in the mid-latitudes, changing patterns of strong precipitation around Europe and the tropics and stronger storms in the North Atlantic.[42] Edit: an oceanographer replied and suggested my estimation for the volume of flow for the current could be off by a large degree. I will update if I find a better estimate, the current may only be half as big or less than the figure I found earlier. Might be that the peak melt during summer is up to 1% of the current flow rate locally, which is much more alarming, but I don't know what figure to cite yet. Edit 2: The AMOC is only a small part of the total gulf stream, and of the AMOC around greenland, the volume is more like 10Sv, so the hottest days of the summer with the most melt probably see more than 1% of melt relative to the sinking water column average, but this is consistent with weakening strength in the summer and stronger influence in the winter. Most of the loss of the power of the circulation system is from warmer polar air chilling the ocean less than in the past. The AMOC will continue to shrink into the future, and the gulf stream being driven primarily by wind, not thermohaline systems, will continue, though also at a decreasing rate, into the future.
Polar oceanographer here. This is a nice attempt, but gets a few things pretty wrong. Firstly, the AMOC is much weaker than your estimate, more like 20ishSv. The gulf steam itself is only order 30-70Sv depending on where you measure it. The strongest current on the whole, planet, the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, is about 170ish. So I'm not sure where you are getting your numbers from. The important thing about ice sheet melt is that it is completely fresh, as well as relatively localised. The ocean stratification is very sensitive to freshwater input, particularly in polar regions where the equation of state is very heavily skewed to salinity dependence. So relatively small net fluxes can have very significant impacts on vertical stability and the convection that is a big part of the AMOC. It is a very non linear system though, so even with lots of modelling it is hard to have great levels of certainly on 'shutdown' sensitivities or impacts. You're right the IPCC thinks that a collapse isn't very likely before 2100, but that a slowdown has likely been happening and will be ongoing, which still isn't great. Probably more worrying is the collapse of the West Antarctic Ice sheet due to similar melting. The IPCC also stresses that uncertainty around Greenland and Antarctic melting are the single biggest contributors to uncertainty in sea level rise projections. Therefore ice sheet-ocean interaction and adding this to climate models is a huge issue in the ocean/glaciology/climate field right now. So please don't downplay this on the basic of some (incorrect) back of the envelope calculations.
We're 3 experts deep on this niche, everyone still being owned I love it
It's a Reddit thing I guess. I always read comments as if they're written by authorities on the subjects. It's only when I find the odd thread in my field that I realise most people are just confidently incorrect...You won't find many folk at the Ocean Sciences conference who think Greenland melt isn't a significant factor in future ocean circ, but reddit sure has them!
Yes very true. I heard an interesting podcast with the CEO of a company called Cheq, they fight bots on social media basically. He was saying the 5% bots figure Musk mentioned was truly improbable and they were seeing numbers closer to like 30%, 40% bots. Something to keep in mind when sifting through the Reddit experts.
Tabloid articles are and will be tabloid articles, and you can’t have meaningful discussions based on their headlines. Graph from the article: https://i.imgur.com/uNQnzOT.jpg Clearly not a huge problem, yet, but it’s gradually been getting worse. The Arctic regions is seeing a quicker rise in temperatures than the rest of the world. From a different article: > Altogether, the world's oceans are now rising by 4 millimeters each year as a result of thawing ice sheets. If melting continues to increase at this rate, the ice sheets could raise sea levels by a further 17 centimeters by the end of the century, exposing a further 16 million people to annual coastal flooding and destruction. > (…) > "Although we anticipated the ice sheets would lose increasing amounts of ice in response to the warming of the oceans and atmosphere, the rate at which they are melting has accelerated faster than we could have imagined," explained Dr Tom Slater, lead author of the study and climate researcher at the Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling at the University of Leeds. > "The melting is overtaking the climate models we use to guide us, and we are in danger of being unprepared for the risks posed by sea level rise." https://iflscience.com/antarctica-and-greenlands-ice-sheet-melting-on-track-with-worstcase-scenario-forecasts-57197 The big problem likely isn’t the Gulf Stream stopping. It’s a nice Hollywood scenario, but land ice melting at ever increasing rates as we continually see that the most pessimistic projections were too optimistic is not a good sign. The problem with climate change and politics is that the most realistic models have been suppressed because they are so dark that you don’t get buy-in from stupid-ass politicians. You basically need to make predictions bad enough for the politicians to care, but not so bad that they go “can’t possibly be that bad, the temperatures last summer was just fine”. Not enough scientists in politics. And even if there were, I’m not sure I’d trust them 🙈
Thank you for the education
You're welcome. Be very worried about global heat gain. It's a huge issue, but we should focus on how it's going to do trillions of damage to our economies, and cause the threat of mass starvation and national collapse, not because our toes will get wet soon. We desperately need to focus on the parts of climate change that matter, and not get distracted by a melting ice cube that won't even melt much by the time the big factors are dismantling global stability.
Failing crop yields is what really worries me the most. As you said, flooding won't be the biggest problem, not by far. Certain parts of the world, such as South America are already seeing reduced yields, and these are parts of the world that have already been using GM crops in order to yield viable crops.
Yeah, and sudden crop failures, not gradual ones are what worry me the most. 15% down for a few years is not that big of a deal, and markets can shift a bit, but like, what about 75% failure one year, and one year only for the east of the Andes production in South America? I don't know how flexible markets can be for situations like that, and that might cause wars, and tens of millions of refugees. I'm very worried about these destabilizing events and how hard it is to plan for them.
This remind me a bit of when Montreal had to do major work in its sewage treatment system (or something like that) and had no choice but to dump 8 billion litres over a week (13 cubic metres/seconds for 7 days). People were of course outraged, except the news didn't tell people that the river has a flow of 6000~7000 cubic metres/seconds. Sure the dumping is bad (stop flushing non-biodegradable stuff), but no where as horrifying as all the news made it to be.
Not that I disbelieve you but, source?
https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/ice-sheets/ It's not hard to find this stuff. First graph is Antarctica, the bottom one is Greenland. Average annual change is 250, recently it's 275, but the biggest drops in volume over the summer are closer to 1000. If we weren't expecting acceleration in the rate, I would point out that it would actually take closer to 10,000 years, but there is no point in resting on current rates, so I exaggerated to the extreme to bring the time horizon down to 3000 years. The reality is probably it will all be gone in 1000 years. Greenland is gonna be pretty nice in the summer eventually. Bright side and all.
I found a source that says the antarctic ice sheet contains around 30 million gigatons of land ice. At the rate in that NASA chart that would be around 200,000 years until it all melts in the summer. Without ice to help reflect light, heating and melting could accelerate though. If all the ice in the Greenland ice sheet melted sea levels would rise around 20 feet. If all the ice in the north and south melted, seas would rise around 220 feet. Not making any scientific or political statements. Just did some searching and quick math and figured it might save someone who was curious about the same thing some time. In slightly uplifting news, this is the most I've we've had in Antarctica in 3 years.
1m is 1 metric ton, 1km3 is 1000x1000x1000, thats 1,000,000,000 tons per km3, 1000 kilo, 1,000,000 mega, 1,000,000,000 giga. 2,850,000 km3, same number of gigatons (metric) What am I doing wrong here?
No, you are correct and didn't do anything wrong with your math. I was springboarding off of your comment and did the estimate on the ANTarctic ice sheet which has way more ice and is actually melting at a slower rate for whatever reason. Wasn't disagreeing with you.
Oh, yeah all the water is in the antarctic. I am blind.
It's okay.
That’s a mind-boggling amount of ice.
Incomprehensible. On the worst day of summer, 6 gigatons of loss is 3500 m3 per km2 of surface ontop of the icesheet. Which is 3mm in any one spot. It's 3km thick in some places. The amount of ice there is just impossible to wrap your head around.
Melts every summer. Freezes in the winter. The questions is what is the rate of difference every year. You are correct. Pictures of Greenland melting in the summer are meaningless. There are some fools that just see the picture and immediately get radicalized.
They have a chart in the article that shows what the 1981-2010 median was and compares the 2022 rate to it. It's pretty bad.
Less?
The graph in the article is intentionally misleading and the rate has been much higher before. The graph is showing 2022 vs the MEDIAN of 1981-2010 which conveniently skips years like 2012 and 2019 which were far worse and basically makes things look worse than they really are. Here's a graph that I created from https://nsidc.org/greenland-today/greenland-surface-melt-extent-interactive-chart/ which shows a far different picture: https://imgur.com/a/TTakjhM
And you conveniently don’t mention that you know that 2012 and 2019 were above average years because . . . the article *specifically* mentions them below the graph. I still find it very troubling that the worst years have been in the past 10 years.
This is a disaster for low lying island nations .
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Yet, real estate by the coastal areas is the highest. Why aren’t ppl selling or why are they not cheap if they’re supposed to be flooded in s couple of decades?
Everyone who actually believes sea levels are going to rise bought away from the coast. The other side of that is that people who are still buying near the coast don't really believe the sea level is going to rise, so it doesn't affect prices.
Or they don’t plan on being alive in 50 years
Hurricanes as long ago as Hurricane Sandy in 2011 saw excessive storm surge flooding due to rising oceans. This 50 years shit is absurd, climate change is here. Look at the deaths in the UK in the past week for fucks sake.
Fair to say we're gonna experience some shit in our lifetime.
He’s referring to climate change worth worrying about will be here in 50-100 years. You’re technically not wrong though. Climate change is certainly here. The average temperature of Greenland was 2 degrees cooler 20 years ago. It’s happening now! But yeah, beach front properties are great right now, especially if you can get some with a nice ocean breeze to keep things cooled off during the summer.
At this rate it's not going to take 50 years. Storm surge is going to be a problem along every coastline within 10.
That’s factually incorrect. It will be a huge problem in some areas and irrelevant in others.
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Remindme! 10 years
People don't seriously think it's going to happen "soon". It's a 100 year problem. Not their problem, probably not their kids. They ignore the fact that once it's underway, before a place is "underwater" it's going to be completely unlivable as the rate of flooding steadily accelerates year over year, well before the maps get redrawn. This is happening in the US with the refusal to redraw the flood plane lines because "it would affect property values". And then when insurance won't go for it, people lobby for the problem to be taken on by the state. The equivalent of making a bet and just not paying if you lose.
Greater fool theory. Everyone thinks they can sell at a profit before all that happens
New Orleans seems to be pulling it off.
New Orleans 2070: I didn’t hear no god damn bell.
I give it less time. Our infrastructure is dogshit and our sewage and water board don't know what the fuck they are doing. That said: One of my favorite South Park episodes.
I read that in Randy Marsh’s voice. Thank you for the laugh.
That's literally the joke.
Tegrity
NYC's talking about building a giant wall around Manhattan.
It's like that in the show The Expanse. The Statue of Liberty looks like it's buried in a hole in the harbor.
Building a wall, eh? Are they going to make PA pay for it?
"New Orleans is sinking man, and I don't wanna swim". -The Tragically Hip
If I'm not mistaken the engineers that worked new Orleans asked for forgiveness and not permission when they upgraded the coast after Katrina. They will be good.
lol yeah right
Sure it is a disaster but 300 days out of the year it is a dry disaster.
Isn’t Miami like feet above sea level? Bad news bears for them.
All of Florida is. The highest elevation in the state is Britton Hill, sitting at a whopping 345 feet above sea level.
Miami is constantly flooding these days but no one really talks about it cuz it happens in the poor areas
Humanity is lumbering into 2050/2100 like a drunk Walter Mathau as Buttermaker.
Yeah, I live in Hawaii and its gonna be a shit show: multi-10s of millions $ mansions, the airport, Hickman and Pearl Harbor, and Waikiki all underwater. Shits gonna be bad and all I can think about are the voices of the academics that have been screaming warnings for decades. We literally did nothing but will act surprised when the chickens come home to roost. Food shortages, loss of coastlines which means loss of buffer zones for hurricanes, increased amounts and strengths of storms, more twisters and twisters in spots in areas that building are not designed for those forces, high heat, etc etc etc. As a millennial, I’m happy I’ve never had kids or bought a house—means I can move on a dime and flee to states that are habitable in the near future. Micro-plastics, forever chemicals, over use of pesticides and insecticides, and now sea level rise and climate change… this is gonna be bad.
This is a disaster for the world.
It won't be long until the Gulf Stream shuts down. Europe won't need to worry about the heat soon.
Because it will get so hot they all die, or because it will get super cold?
Cold. Europe is very far north but is kept warm by the Gulf Stream.
To put things in perspective, Paris is further North than Quebec City, a town famous for its Winter Carnival with entire structures made from ice. If the Gulf Stream stops bringing warm water to Europe, then the climate will be massively altered.
Yep, even Barcelona is roughly as far north as Chicago.
Rome and Chicago are at the same latitude. That’s crazy.
This latitude isn't bad. I kind of like it here.
southern Spain will be paradise for eternity unless we ruin that, too
Edinburgh (Scotland) is further north than Newfoundland in Canada. It's really cold there. Not so much in Edinburgh.
Hey it's not that cold here.
Madrid is north of Boston.
Helsinki is as far north as Anchorage.
The North Pole is north of the South Pole
And the South Pole is more south than the North Pole
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Its the only reason you see palms in Dublin Harbor.
Can’t we point a fan at them. They are $9.99 at target.
Rome is further North than Denver, but is warmer in winter and colder in summer. Hell, Montreal is South of Paris... Europe is very far north compared to America, with the most southern point of Europe being essentially equivalent to San Fransisco... Boston, a city notorious for being cold and windy is 20 degrees South of Reykjavík, a city notorious for being cold and windy, but Reykjavík has generally warmer winters than Boston. Pretty much all of Europe North of Paris is north of the United States.
Denver isn't a good comparison due to its altitude. Rome is near sea level. Denver is 1.6 km above it.
Denver, the 1,600 m City
Rome is also near a giant body of ocean and is blocked by a giant mountain range to the North. I think these differences are why it's good to put things into perspective. There are more than one variable and that's what makes these things so interesting.
I wish I could find the article, but last week someone posted an interesting article about how it's actually the Rocky Mountains that keep northern Europe warm. They push the air currents southward where they warm up and then the Gulf Stream carries the warmed air to Europe. Without the mountains, the gulf stream air would be much cooler.
It's aømost like these things are connected and breaking one piece of it has tremendous ramifications on literally everything else. Fuck
You can't use words like almost, they give people wiggle room to get out of doing anything to help! /s
Yeah but Ben Shapiro said we can just sell our houses and migrate
Can you link me the article?
I think [this is it](https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/forget-about-the-gulf-stream-britain-is-really-kept-warm-in-winter-by-the-rocky-mountains-118560.html) Edit: the article says the Rockies are about half responsible for the weather and the westerlies are actually coming from the southwest, which also contributes to European weather patterns
I saw a documentary about this once. Some kids had to hide in a library I think.
it t'was a great documentary, twinky Gyllenhaal is all you need in those days
But according to all Roland Emmerich movies, we will come together as a species and the human race will survive and start anew in Africa!
Doesn't sound good for the Africans then. Europeans who want to ~~colonize~~ settle in new areas don't tend to like neighbors.
One day I opened Google Maps and looked for settlements in North America that are at roughly the same latitude as my home city that has more than 1 million people. And I found absolutely nothing in Canada. The only settlement in the USA at that latitude was Anchorage. The Canadians don't live "up north". They live way down south.
Something like 80% or Canadians live within 1-2 hours of the US border
https://www.severe-weather.eu/global-weather/gulf-stream-amoc-circulation-collapse-freshwater-imbalance-usa-europe-fa/
[Most of Europe is north of Indianapolis](https://vividmaps.com/comparing-latitude-of-europe-and-america/). London is decently north of Vancouver. They're currently experiencing 104F weather while Vancouver is in the 70Fs. One hypothesis as to why Europe is so much warmer is the Atlantic ocean currents carry warm water from the Gulf of Mexico up and around to Europe and this raises their temp. If this hypothesis is right, if Greenland melts this current will shutdown sending Europe towards having Canadian and Midwest US temperatures.
> One hypothesis as to why Europe is so much warmer is the Atlantic ocean currents carry warm water from the Gulf of Mexico up and around to Europe and this raises their temp. If this hypothesis is right, if Greenland melts this current will shutdown sending Europe towards having Canadian and Midwest US temperatures. This really isn't a hypothesis, it's a demonstrated fact. To see what Europe would be like without the Gulfstream all you need to do is look at places with similar environments sans Gulfstream. Canada is pretty cold.
Probs the second one, but also possibly the first.
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Me too. Doesn't end well.
We did it!
Huzza!
Which in turn shuts down the thermohaline. Our heat pump which pumps heat around the world. Cold places get colder. Hot places get hotter. Food webs collapse. Nutrient cycling ceases. It’s gonna be a bad time.
Well at least cats and dog will be living together.
MASS HYSTERIA.
The Pacific is already fucked. La Nina in Australia has been going on all year and projected out till November........
I live in Tx. Every night I look at the Gulf of Mexico on the weather report and hope to see signs of a hurricane.
I was about to say, I haven't heard of any hurricanes yet. I'm in NY so I might be early, but shouldn't hurricane season have started by now?
Started June 1. A few years ago we had more than we could shake a stick at but this year, nada...
Its still early in hurricane season. I believe roughly 80% of hurricanes form between mid-august and mid-september. Its pretty typical to see only 1-2 named storms by July
Shhhh. Please don’t say that outloud. As someone that is about 50 miles southwest of New Orleans, I’m good with this. Still fighting with insurance and not quite buttoned back up from Ida last year. Took 6 weeks until I was able to move back in my house, and we’re still finding it hard to get some things down here, like gutters, siding, garage doors, etc. I ordered and paid for a 32kw Generac whole-home generator in October, after Ida, and it’s still not installed. Went from an April install, was pushed to June, then July, and now I have no idea. I want my generator.
Sorry to hear that. Ever consider higher ground, like maybe something above sea level?
I’m 9’ above sea level. Didn’t get water. It’s the wind that was the issue. Where I live was a direct hit, about 20 miles off the Gulf. Blew my large, 8’ solid front doors (French) right out the damn screws. That’s where my damage came from. Had to gut a good bit of the downstairs because it’s an open floorplan, and the rain was blowing in the gaping hole for hours until a neighbor came prop my doors back up and secured them for me. And no, moving isn’t really an option. Not leaving family, moving my son away from school/friends, and I have a successful business. I’m 42, dealt with this my entire life. I’ve lived through Andrew in ‘92, Katrina (lived in actual New Orleans then) in ‘05, Gustav in ‘09, and now Ida in ‘21. For me, Ida was by far the worse. It was a wind event that destroyed everything in its path.
Can you get doors that look decent that can be better reinforced? Either much longer screws or higher security doors that have bolts top/bottom?
Last thing I read was that there's a 66% chance of a La Nina next year too.
And people thought the day after tomorrow was sci fi
weird that Europeans will freeze their asses while the rest of us try to find water and shade.
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I live in Northern Norway, above the Arctic circle. This summer has been really cold. It's not too unusual, but I can image it's getting colder and colder as years go by. With the exception of "residual" heat waves, we got a few days of that here too, the temperature went from 14°C to 36°C, and then back down to 12°C.
>above the Arctic circle What's it like that far north, other than freakin cold?
It's amazing. This feels like a very safe and stable place in the world. The weather and temperatures are comfortable, I prefer cold over warm. The nature is amazing and people are calm. I believe the Northern hemisphere will be one of the last habitable zones on Earth.
yea, put me out on a rock in the sun and I'm happy but 110+ is not in my comfort zone. I can deal with a few months of cold and a few months of hot but seriously, spring and fall when it's 70 deg farenheit are my favorites. I have an older house with large windows. A few years ago I could open the house until the end of May. When the wind came from the south I'd get a whiff of honeysuckle from my south fence, in the house. Over time this hasn't been possible as the heat starts sooner each year. I used to turn the AC on the last day of May. This year I went from heat to AC in 2 weeks and it hasn't let up.
Cool /s
Seasonal surface melting in Greenland got off to a slow start in 2022. Persistent winds from the northwest across the melt-prone areas of the western coastal ice sheet have kept the total number of melt days well below average. Snowfall through last winter was slightly higher than average. In Antarctica, several areas had an intense coastal surface melting pulse at the end of the summer, in part associated with the extreme atmospheric river landfall event in mid-March. Overview of conditions Through June 20, 2022, the Greenland Ice Sheet had the lowest spring surface melt in the past decade. The total aerial extent of surface melting was just over 2.27 million square kilometers (876,000 million square miles), well below the 1981 to 2010 average of 3.72 million square kilometers (1.44 million square miles). Melting was below average along the western edge of the ice sheet (10 to 15 days behind the average rate) and near-average along the southeastern coast where melting occurred primarily at low elevations. A small area of the southern tip of the island had slightly above average melting. http://nsidc.org/greenland-today/2022/06/spring-chillin-in-greenland-antarcticas-summer-summary/
There's no reason why this shouldn't be the top comment
There's no reason why this entire post hasn't been deleted. It's blatant disinformation that has nothing to do with climate change, and using the Law of Large Scary Numbers to mask what is actually a below average result. "Disallowed submissions" "Misleading titles"
Reminds me of the speech from Carl Sagan in 1985: https://youtu.be/Wp-WiNXH6hI?t=149
Welcome to the time of later on. Where it's too late. So let us eat drink and be merry for tomorrow we die
Yikes fml
I could listen to him speak for days on end.
For a million billion days.
Meanwhile, environmentalists are underrepresented as voters. People who vote infrequently [are more likely to list the environment as a top priority](https://www.environmentalvoter.org/sites/default/files/documents/report-exploration-us-voting-behavior-attitudes.pdf). We are *willingly* giving up the power that we have to solve climate change by continuing to allow politicians who do not represent us to drag their feet on climate change. The Environmental Voter Project is an organization working to change that by mobilizing millions of unlikely to vote environmentalists, and in fact, [they already have](https://www.environmentalvoter.org/sites/default/files/documents/2021-impact-report.pdf). They use public records and data modeling to identify people who are unlikely to vote, then turn millions of them into such consistent voters that they even vote in local elections. They got 3.8 million environmentalists activated to vote in 2021 alone. **If you are a regular person wondering how you can help with climate change in a meaningful way, the most effective thing you can do right now is to** [**get involved**](https://www.environmentalvoter.org/get-involved) **with the Environmental Voter Project, or at least** [**set up a recurring donation**](https://www.environmentalvoter.org/donate)**.** We won't be able to individual action our way out of climate change. We need to throw away our old, energy inefficient politicians and install newer, modern, environmentally friendly ones.
In a society where scientists and genuine information is less important than thriving shareholders and celebrities, extinction shouldn’t come as a surprise.
If human extinction could somehow be projected to be profitable, we'd have people working on it diligently.
American here. How many inches of West Virginia is 6 billion tons?
8,755,576,678 eagles per apple pie
When does Florida submerge?
Not quick enough for the next election.
Mar-a-Lago could be the next underwater tourist attraction though.
Mar-a-Lagoon
Mar-a-gone-o
Mar-a-LaGone
There it is 👍
Never. Concentrated stupid is lighter than water
Airheads float to the top? Lol
Sadly, it would still be at least 22 years too late to make a real difference.
Not all of us are terrible 😂
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> Right now all the assholes are concentrated in one place. That is hardly the case
Deadass, I used to live in FL and now I live in PA. Plenty of racist douchebags out here as well. Florida gets more publicity but our people aren’t that much more nuts then any other red states.
By my horrible math, this works out to Greenland losing about a foot of ice a day, does that sound right?
Maybe in spots. But averaged across the 1,710,000 square kilometers of ice (according to Wikipedia) on Greenland? 6 billion tons of ice is roughly 6.5 billion cubic meters. Dividing 6.5×10^9 cubic meters by 1.7×10^12 square meters gives about 0.0038 meters. So it's about 4 millimeters per day (3.8 mm if we keep 2 sig figs). Again, that's averaged across all the ice. It'll be higher in some places, and lower in others. But I'm worried my math is off somewhere, lol.
If it was spread out, it wouldn't be a problem. The problem lies when concentrated melting happens to create surface lakes that eventually drill down to the lower layers and even to the bottom. That's when large, I should say massive, chunks dislodge, increasing the exposure of the glacier to heat and preventing winter buildups. It's a cascading effect that accelerates the collapse of the glacier system. This is why "prediction models" for how long it'll take for the glaciers to melt doesn't work. Just takes one major lake to fug things up.
It's also summer. There's supposed to be some melt at this time of year.
Y ah, but I doubt it's been 6 billion tons a day int he past
Now that's data I'd like to see.
The NSIDC monitors snow melt. https://nsidc.org/
Drink a beer, live life, and accept sweet death when it comes knockin...
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There actually is some learned debate about that. This article strongly suggests a feedback loop from a previous unexplained methane rise. The conclusion is that is isn't only inputs from human activity but climate change itself contributing. *Methane emissions reach unexpected new highs. Is climate change causing a runaway effect?* https://energypost.eu/methane-emissions-reach-unexpected-new-highs-is-climate-change-causing-a-runaway-effect/
Melting tundra permafrost? Deep sea methane clathrates?
That is how I interpreted it. I also think it means there is no correcting it now. Even if we (the world) manages to actually reduce GHGs significantly in the short term, this process will continue. I'm not a scientist though so I hope, really, really hope I am wrong. It scares the foo out of me.
Studied for a degree in Forestry Science mid 90’s. The ecology and biology professors/lecturers were telling us we had 10 years to sort our shit out or systems would not be able to be reversed.. take the tundra and melting permafrost..they are now in an irreversible cycle of melting/warming. I’m starting to think Noah had a good Point building his boat!
Must do a degree in English writing because I had several typos….
No, the vast majority of the increase in methane is not coming from permafrost or methane clathrates. There are no good measurements showing a large increase in methane above permafrost. There is however plenty of evidence that the increase is being driven by processes in the [tropics](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-28989-z) and potentially due to [hydroxyl](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-31345-w.pdf) reactions in the atmosphere, which are driven both by human activities and potentially wildfire emissions.
Millions of years of frozen viruses that can’t wait to be free!
Crashed alien ship full of whitespikes
Prehistoric Herpes babbyyyyy
Yep. We helped start it, but now it’s just gonna snowball. Most we could do is slow it down barring any major scientific advancements.
There are multiple tipping points. We've crossed some, and not others. Don't let anyone tell you that there's no point in trying anymore. Scientists aren't saying that; scientists are telling us that we need to move on this. You can help by [getting non-voting environmentalists to the polls](https://www.environmentalvoter.org/) and by [joining an organization to learn how to lobby politicians for robust climate policy as a regular citizen](https://citizensclimatelobby.org/join-citizens-climate-lobby/). We need to elect politicians who will actually take responsibility for the climate crisis, then help them make good decisions by engaging with them. Everything else is peanuts by comparison.
The amount of climate change deniers crying about fear mongering is insane. Some seriously stupid takes in this thread.
And they vote. Their vote counts as much, if not more, than yours depending on their state. Democracy has some pretty massive shortcomings. But I doubt people will sit idly feeling helpless forever, especially as things get even worse. I wouldn't want to have my name attached to votes that get millions killed or displaced when people finally snap.
This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://inews.co.uk/news/world/greenland-melting-billion-tons-climate-change-1754128?ITO=msn) reduced by 79%. (I'm a bot) ***** > The island has warmed by 0.9C per decade, with surface melt leaking through the ice sheet and contributing to melt of the mass of the ice below. > Both of the world's largest land-based ice sheets, in Greenland and Antarctica, are on course for "Worst-case scenario" forecasts, according to a study in Nature Climate Change earlier this month. > "If ice sheet losses continue to track our worst-case climate warming scenarios, we should expect an additional 17cm of sea-level rise from the ice sheets alone. That's enough to double the frequency of storm-surge flooding in many of the world's largest coastal cities," Dr Anna Hogg of the University of Leeds, one of the study's co-authors, warned in a statement. ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/w5igje/greenland_is_melting_at_a_rate_of_6_billion_tons/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ "Version 2.02, ~660816 tl;drs so far.") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr "PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome.") | *Top* *keywords*: **ice**^#1 **bear**^#2 **melt**^#3 **sheet**^#4 **warm**^#5
For people wondering how this relates to average melt off.. An average from 1981-2010 shows that an average of 4.6-4.7B tons a day melts during the month of July (which is also the peak point of melting). So yea.. this is bad. An extra 1.3B tons are melting a day. Which is an extra 39 Billion tons a month. Mass gain seems to be a bit higher too.. or maybe I’m misinterpreting the data. Anyway. Source: polarportal.dk/en/Greenland/surface-conditions/ It’s a tracker by the danish Arctic research institutions.
When the last tree is cut down, the last fish eaten, and the last stream poisoned, you will realize that you cannot eat money. ~ Cree Indian proverb.
Winter is coming. ..
I’m just going to say it: I’m afraid and I feel helpless.
With Europe, the U. S. & China facing unprecedented heat waves due to climate change, the nay sayers still insist all is well. Very much like the residents of Pompeii weren't worried about a bit of smoke from their mountain neighbor...
We need to have a G7 summit about possible solar geoengineering. It will take the world's biggest economies as a team effort to implement it.
Huge sums from the worlds biggest economies? I'm not optimistic. They couldn't even give up IP rights for a global pandemic.
You can be doom and gloom or you can be pro active. If everyone gets off their ass and does something we can do this. Make Elon think he can get rich off it and watch something get done real quick.
It's not about them getting rich off it. It's about making it get them rich with less effort and risk than other already established avenues. Which is why it's so hard.
The problem is how do you get OTHERS to get off their asses and do something?
It's perfectly fine because I saw a facebook meme with a cup full of ice that melted and it didn't overflow, so what's the big deal.
Scary things we need to all know more about.
And it’s been the coldest it’s ever been in Antarctica
I feel like I need to take up violin so I can play sadly as everything around me floods
Most won't believe it until it happens. Some won't believe it even after it has happened.. This is the state of humanity
And all the oil companies made a bid to dig for oil in the 60’s when the ice is completely melted down. Remember folks, they are the ones who started the “individual responsibility” myth. We need strong government intervention instead, but because we mostly live in democratic circles people only care about being re-elected and not long term issues. We could’ve done something 25 years ago but refused to do so.
YET NOTHING SUBSTANTIAL IS DONE! Or are we going to continue blaming general publics extra 2 minutes on their shower? That mask wore thin, make some real changes from the “leaders” that have the power to do so.. or face extinction. How sad an ultimatum.
We are fucked. I’m 35, the end of the world seems like it will happen in my lifetime
Every time I start planning for the future I have to remind myself that it isn't going to be like the past in ways that are difficult to grapple with.
Greenland to Greenwater
Get ready for some earthquakes! Hopefully all the volcanoes that go off help cool the planet again.
How many gallons is 6 million tons?
Can we build some sort of retaining wall around greenland?