Melting glaciers of Greenland could pose a major threat to Mankind

The melting glaciers of Greenland could pose a major threat to Mankind and this would be on the agenda when the world gets ready for the most important global climate summit yet in Paris later this month. The news from Greenland could add urgency to the negotiations because another major glacier appears to have begun a rapid retreat into a deep underwater basin.
This has been noticed at Greenland's Jakobshavn Glacier and also in the Amundsen Sea region of West Antarctica as reported in nzherald.co.nz dated 13 November 2015.

Warm ocean waters reaching the deep bases of marine glaciers appears to be a major cause for the melting. The new fast-moving glacier is the Zachariae glacier or Zachariæ Isstrøm - it is located in the far northeastern part of Greenland.
In a new paper in Science, Jeremie Mouginot of the University of California-Irvine and his colleagues have discovered that the ocean-based glacier, which contains 0.5 metres or a foot and a half of potential sea level rise, has begun a rapid retreat, especially since 2012.
The glacier has lost fully 95 percent of the ice shelf that used to help stabilize it and now sports a 75-metre high ice cliff extending above the water (the glacier also extends hundreds of additional meters below it).
NASA has estimated that currently, the Greenland ice sheet is losing several hundred billion tons (or gigatons) per year and that is raising sea levels by three quarters of a millimeter annually.
That is a dangerous trend.

(Image source wikimediacommons.org)

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Rise in ocean levels much faster than anticipated – danger signs for US East Coast

#OceanLevels #globalwarming #ClimateChange #glaciermelting It is a fact that global warming and melting of Antarctica icecaps has resulted in the rising levels of oceans and, as per statistics, the world's oceans are now rising far faster than they did in the past because of climate change.
A new study has brought out the hard facts that for much of the 20th century - until about 1990 - sea level was about 30 percent less than earlier research had figured. However, about 25 years ago the rise in the levels was comparatively faster and the acceleration in 1990 was more dramatic than had been imagined or calculated.
As revealed in the journal Nature the present sea level rise rate that began in 1990 is calculated to be 2.5 times faster than it was from 1900 to 1990 – these are matters of grave concern.
Previous research had revealed that between 1900 and 1990, the seas rose about 2cm a decade while, the rise during 1900-1990 was less than 1.3cm every decade.
In the opinion of scientists, such a fast pace can be attributed to the melting ice sheets in Greenland and West Antarctica apart from shrinking glaciers that have been triggered by man-made global warming.
Lead author of the study Carling Hay, a geophysical researcher at Harvard University, feels that this trend is not good news for the cities along the US East Coast where water levels are rising at a much faster rate than the world average.

The Arctic is gradually losing its ice cover leading to global warming

#globalwarming A group of 63 scientists from 13 countries have created a report card of the Arctic and the findings should be a cause of worry because it reveals several single-year dramatic changes, unlike other years. The broad conclusion is that the Arctic and its future are looking dimmer every year.
As per the report, during spring and summer of 2014, Earth's icy northern region lost more of its signature whiteness that reflects the sun's heat. Dark land and bodies of water surfaced – these absorb more energy, keeping yet more heat on already warming planet. The result is rise in global warming.
The report also states that spring snow cover in Eurasia reached a record low in April. Moreover, the Arctic summer sea ice continued a long-term, steady decline. And, worse, Greenland set a record in August for the least amount of sunlight reflected in that month.
The report is from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and other agencies.
It seems that while the U.S. East Coast shivered during January's cold snap from a polar vortex that slipped south, parts of Alaska were 18 degrees warmer than normal. These ae not good signs for the health of our Earth.