Ice sheets tell a scary new story
In canada the Toronto Star is reporting Ice sheets tell a scary new story.
[A] team led by James Hansen, head of NASA’s climate agency, has published a study that identifies what’s going on at the poles, and confirms the vulnerability of the ice sheets. Its findings throw into question all the conclusions reached by the IPCC.
In particular, the study says ocean levels could rise by metres this century, not centimetres as the UN panel suggested. Worse still, what’s occurring in polar ice fields could flip the world into much faster and far more devastating global warming than predicted by the IPCC.
This kind of fast transition has happened in the past – many times, according to paleoclimatic records, the Hansen study says – and it can happen now.
If it does occur, the study warns, it could produce runaway global warming powerful enough to raise sea levels 25 metres, as happened about 3.4 million years ago.
The study directly contradicts the IPCC, which expected the Antarctic ice sheet to get bigger, “due to increased snowfall.” Instead, ice fields in West Antarctica could collapse if current trends are not reversed, the study says.
It is the essential non-linearity of the changes in climate brought on by planetary heating that is the real cause for concern. If heating the Earth were to simply give rise to a smooth transition to a climate for a warmer planet then we have some chance of adapting. The real story however is that changes to the climate will come suddenly, and quickly, over a matter of years, not centuries. That is change we can not simply adapt to. Act now and reduce your own CO2 emissions. — DS
Technorati Tags: Arctic, climate change, disrupted nature, global warming, ice, ice caps, meltdown, sea level rise, sea levels, tipping point
