Greenland

The 27cm predicted sea rise is more than twice as much as scientists previously expected from Greenland's melting ice.

This holds if more snow piles up on top of a glacier, it causes lower areas to expand. “Zombie”, or doomed ice is still attached to thicker areas of the sheet but is no longer getting fed by larger glaciers. This is the first time scientists calculated a minimum ice loss – and accompanying sea level rise – for Greenland, one of Earth’s two gigantic ice sheets that are slowly shrinking because of climate change from burning coal, oil and natural gas. Box said the methods his team used were “radically different” from computer modelling but could complement this work to predict the effects of sea level rise in the coming decades. By contrast, last year’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report projected a range of 6-13cm (2-5 inches) for likely sea level rise from Greenland ice melt by the year 2100. [study in the journal Nature Climate Change](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-022-01441-2) said sea rise could reach as much as 78cm (30 inches) – enough to swamp vast swathes of low-lying coastlines and supercharge floods and storm surges.

(AP) -- Greenland's rapidly melting ice sheet will eventually raise global sea level by at least 10.6 inches (27 centimeters) -- more than twice as much as ...

A pair of Landsat images acquired 49 years apart reveals where the region's glaciers and ice caps have retreated and narrowed.

Story by [Kathryn Hansen](https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/about/kathryn-hansen). [Joshua Stevens](https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/about/joshua-stevens), using Landsat data from the [U.S. [false color](https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/features/FalseColor) (MSS bands 6-5-4). The second image (right), acquired on August 20, 2022, by the [Operational Land Imager](https://landsat.gsfc.nasa.gov/satellites/landsat-8/spacecraft-instruments/operational-land-imager/) (OLI) on [Landsat 8](https://landsat.gsfc.nasa.gov/satellites/landsat-8/), shows the same area 49 years later. The Landsat mission continues onward through today, with the [launch of Landsat 9](https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/148888/nasa-and-usgs-launch-landsat-9) in September 2021. That’s more than the peripheral glaciers in southeast and southwest Greenland are losing, but less than in north Greenland, where peripheral glaciers have been losing as much as 26 gigatons (29 billion U.S. Notice that in 2022, the edges of the ice caps and glaciers generally appear much grayer than in 1973. [Thule Air Base](https://www.spacebasedelta1.spaceforce.mil/Thule-AB-Greenland/) (Pituffik). But with very little vegetation in northwest Greenland, the false-color Landsat 1 image appears similar in color to the natural-color Landsat 8 image (OLI bands 4-3-2). Peripheral glaciers in northwest Greenland have been losing about 3.5 to 7 gigatons (4 billion to 8 billion U.S. But peripheral glaciers account for 11 percent of the island’s ice loss, which makes them outsized contributors to current sea level rise. The similarity in color makes it easy to see where glacial ice has retreated, narrowed, and in one case surged.

Climate change has locked-in 10 inches of sea level rise from Greenland's melting ice, more than double what scientists previously expected.

[huge melt year,](https://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2012/0725/What-caused-the-sudden-massive-ice-melt-in-Greenland) when the equilibrium between adding and subtracting ice was most out of balance. The researchers in the study said they couldn’t estimate the timing of the committed melting, yet in the last sentence they mention, “within this century,” without supporting it, Stearns said. When that ice melts into water, if it were concentrated only over the United States, it would be 37 feet (11 meters) deep. “You have committed mass loss from the ice,” Alley said in an email. Study authors looked at the ratio of what’s being added to what’s being lost and calculated that 3.3% of Greenland’s total ice volume will melt no matter what happens with the world cutting carbon pollution, Colgan said. Colgan said this is actually all a best case scenario. The unavoidable ten inches in the study is more than twice as much sea level rise as scientists had previously expected from the melting of Greenland’s ice sheet. [Here's the Climate Impact of the Rich and Famous](https://time.com/6208632/celebrities-climate-impact-private-jets-yachts/?utm_source=roundup&utm_campaign=20220825) Meanwhile the doomed ice is melting from climate change, said study co-author William Colgan, a glaciologist at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland. What scientists did for the study was look at the ice in balance. Zombie or doomed ice is ice that is still attached to thicker areas of ice, but is no longer getting fed by those larger glaciers. “This ice has been

Greenland's ice sheet loss is inevitable even if the world immediately stops emitting greenhouse gases, researchers said.

population and $7.9 trillion in gross domestic product, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Previous research has suggested that if all of the ice sheet were to melt, global sea levels could rise Scientists located in Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Norway, the Netherlands, Switzerland and the U.S. In the U.S., coastal residents represent 40% of the total U.S. The ice loss will prompt about 10 inches of sea level rise between now and 2100. Scientists warned the melting is inevitable even if the world immediately stops emitting planet-warming greenhouse gases.

Zombie or doomed ice is ice that is still attached to thicker areas of ice, but is no longer getting fed by those larger glaciers.

Time is the key unknown here and a bit of a problem with the study, said two outside ice scientists, Leigh Stearns of the University of Kansas and Sophie Nowicki of the University of Buffalo. Pennsylvania State University glaciologist Richard Alley, who was not part of the study but said it made sense, said the committed melting and sea level rise is like an ice cube put in a cup of hot tea in a warm room. One of the study authors said that more than 120 trillion tons (110 trillion metric tons) of ice is already doomed to melt from the warming ice sheet’s inability to replenish its edges. Study authors looked at the ratio of what is being added to what is being lost and calculated that 3.3% of Greenland’s total ice volume will melt no matter what happens with the world cutting carbon pollution, Mr Colgan said. The unavoidable 10in in the study is more than twice as much sea level rise as scientists had previously expected from the melting of Greenland’s ice sheet. Meanwhile the doomed ice is melting from climate change, said study co-author William Colgan, a glaciologist at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland.

Widespread ice losses from Greenland have locked in nearly a foot of global sea level rise in the near future -- and new research suggests there is no way ...

The rate of that change is the problem, Colgan told CNN's Bill Weir during a research trip in the summer of 2021. released earlier this year by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which found that US coasts could expect 10 to 12 inches of sea level rise in the next 30 years. Researchers from the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland observed changes in ice-sheet volume in and around Greenland and saw that meltwater runoff has been the primary driver. Greenland holds enough ice that if it all melted, it could lift sea levels by roughly 25 feet around the world. "This water is technically already under the bridge." That's generally the same amount that global seas have already risen over the last century from Greenland, Antarctica and thermal expansion (when ocean water expands as it warms) combined.

Zombie ice from the massive Greenland ice sheet will eventually raise global sea level by at least 10 inches (27 centimeters) on its own, according to a ...

[to a different degree 2019](https://apnews.com/article/climate-change-latin-america-ap-top-news-science-us-news-6fcaab97241d34c83f448f019179ca6b) ) was a [huge melt year,](https://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2012/0725/What-caused-the-sudden-massive-ice-melt-in-Greenland) when the equilibrium between adding and subtracting ice was most out of balance. The researchers in the study said they couldn’t estimate the timing of the committed melting, yet in the last sentence they mention, “within this century,” without supporting it, Stearns said. By contrast, last year’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report projected a range of 2 to 5 inches (6 to 13 centimeters) for likely sea level rise from Greenland ice melt by the year 2100. Study authors looked at the ratio of what’s being added to what’s being lost and calculated that 3.3% of Greenland’s total ice volume will melt no matter what happens with the world cutting carbon pollution, Colgan said. Meanwhile the doomed ice is melting from climate change, said study co-author William Colgan, a glaciologist at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland. “This ice has been consigned to the ocean, regardless of what climate (emissions) scenario we take now.”

Even if all the greenhouse gas emissions driving global warming ceased today, we find that Greenland's ice loss under current temperatures will raise global sea ...

[contributing about 0.04 inches](https://doi.org/10.1002/2017GL074954) (1 millimeter) per year to [global sea level rise](https://www.ipcc.ch/srocc/chapter/chapter-4-sea-level-rise-and-implications-for-low-lying-islands-coasts-and-communities/) over the past decade. [fractures and moulins](https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2020/12/23/climate-moulins-greenland/), bringing with them vast quantities of latent heat. [at least 3.3% of its ice](https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-022-01441-2), over 100 trillion metric tons. Each glacial is driven by [shifts in Earth’s orbit](https://climate.nasa.gov/ask-nasa-climate/2949/why-milankovitch-orbital-cycles-cant-explain-earths-current-warming) [that modulate](https://doi.org/10.1126%2Fscience.194.4270.1121) how much solar radiation reaches the Earth’s surface. [raise global sea level](https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-022-01441-2) by at least 10.8 inches (27.4 centimeters). It’s an understatement that the societal stakes are high, and the risk is tragically real going forward. [A study published](https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-022-01441-2) Aug. [Greenland ice sheet](http://nsidc.org/greenland-today/) is a massive, frozen reservoir that resembles an inverted pudding bowl. [a field glaciologist](https://cage.uit.no/employee/alun-hubbard/), I’ve worked on ice sheets for more than 30 years. Ice losses due to enhanced melt, rain, ice flow and calving now far exceed the net gain from snow accumulation. And the previously submerged portion of this immense block of glacier ice just breached the ocean – a frothing maelstrom flinging ice cubes of several tons high into the air. A milewide section of glacier front has fractured and is collapsing into the ocean, calving an immense iceberg.