lightblueline

Scientific American (February 2008) outlines the risk that the major ice sheets (particularly the West Antarctic Ice Sheet) hold for potential rapid sea level rise. This piece is written by Robin Bell at Columbia University.

The Unquiet Ice (stub)

NOTE: the whole article requires a subscription.

Key Concepts:
The land-based ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica hold enough water to raise global sea level by more than 200 feet.
A complex “plumbing system” of rivers, lakes and meltwater lies under the ice sheets. That water “greases” the flow of vast streams of ice toward the ocean.
For millennia, the out going discharge of ice has been balanced by incoming snowfall. But when warming air or surface meltwater further greases the flow or removes its natural impediments, huge quantities of ice lurch seaward.
Models of potential sea-level rise from climate change have ignored the effects of subglacial water and the vast streams of ice on the flow of ice entering the sea.