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Think. Again.

(19,395 posts)
1. Thank you, I had assumed from the title...
Sun Sep 15, 2024, 06:32 AM
Sep 2024

...that this would be an article on the rivulets of warmer, melted water that have begun reaching under the ice bed and threatening to dislodge (and then melt) the vast areas of frozen ice that keeps our sea-levels from rising incredibly high.

What Lies Beneath Melting Glaciers and Thawing Permafrost?

"The Arctic is warming four times faster than the rest of the planet, and this means that glaciers, which sit on land, and sea ice, which floats on the ocean surface, are melting rapidly. Two-thirds of Arctic Sea ice has disappeared since 1958 when it was first measured. Between 2000 and 2019, the world’s glaciers lost 267 billon tons of ice each year. Himalayan glaciers are on a trajectory to lose one-third of their ice by 2100, and Alpine glaciers are projected to lose half of theirs.

“I can tell you from our research that the bedrock underneath the ice will become exposed at a much higher speed than we think,” said Joerg Schaefer, a climate geochemist at the Columbia Climate School’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory who is researching the Greenland ice sheet. “All of the predictions are way too conservative in terms of change—the change will be much faster. That’s true globally. But Greenland might be one of the areas where these predictions of ice change are way, way, way too conservative because of a variety of climate factors.”
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Source: https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2022/09/13/what-lies-beneath-melting-glaciers-and-thawing-permafrost/


Why Are Glaciers Melting from the Bottom? It’s Complicated

"Scientists already generally agree that glacier retreat in Antarctica is largely being driven by warm water seeping underneath the ice—the process has been demonstrated by multiple studies in the last few years. As the ice melts, the point where it attaches to the bedrock at the bottom of the ocean (commonly known as the “grounding line”) recedes inland, which can cause the glaciers to become less stable and lose more ice over time."
-snip-
Source: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-are-glaciers-melting-from-the-bottom-its-complicated/

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