SOURCE: Garn Press
DATE: February 5, 2018
SNIP: The key question, as I see it, is how to project what the sea level will soon be due to ice sheet melting. But this is confounded by us not really knowing what to expect. We keep being surprised by nature being more sensitive and complex. As the science develops, we see more interconnection, where multiplying feedbacks produce surprisingly fast responses.
Will there be some saving self-regulation of human-induced climate warming and its melting land ice consequences? The enormous increase of heat in our oceans, from past decades of enhanced greenhouse effect, negates any hope that negative feedbacks or even solar output will prevent a much warmer world. The few negative feedbacks we have found for ice — like more snow as a result of a warming climate, more reflective frost, more efficient sub-glacial water transmission — are clearly being outdone. And at the global scale, despite some negative feedbacks like more clouds, clearly we are not seeing net cooling. Feedbacks, whether positive or negative, only do their thing after the initial effect. Negative feedbacks don’t reverse the perturbation.
Seemingly the biggest issue with abrupt sea level rise comes from the now unstoppable loss of key sectors of west Antarctic ice and the discovery of more marine instability than we thought elsewhere. Like glaciers thinning rapidly in east Antarctica. Or in Greenland where improved bedrock maps reveal a marine connection an average of 40 kilometers further inland than previously thought. Or like how new fjord underwater mapping reveals greater fjord depths, increasing the odds that deep warm ocean water can communicate with more Greenland glaciers than previously thought. Surprise, surprise, surprise.
If the past decade of scientific inquiry is any indication, I’d say we are in for more surprises.
[A]las, when it comes to ice, how fast it can go and how fast the sea will rise, if I were a betting man, I’d put my money on it going faster than forecast.
Read the rest: http://garnpress.com/2018/earths-ice-is-melting-much-faster-than-forecast-heres-why-thats-worrying/