"History is a wonderful thing, if only it was true"
-Tolstoy

Friday, July 04, 2008

It's Melting... It's Melting

News Flash
Ice Melts in the Summer

Someone please alert Al Gore!

Seasonal Factor Seen in Melting and Ice Shifts in Greenland - NYTimes.com

"Recent studies have shown that this water, which flows deep into the ice through natural drainpipes called moulins, allows the ice to slide faster over bedrock toward the ocean. And the faster the ice flows, the faster sea levels rise. But a Dutch study using 17 years of satellite measurements in western Greenland suggests that the movement associated with the meltwater is not as rapid as had been feared. The acceleration appears to be a transient summer phenomenon, the researchers said, with the yearly movement actually dropping slightly in some places.

“The positive-feedback mechanism between melt rate and ice velocity,” says the report, published Friday in the journal Science, “appears to be a seasonal process that may have only a limited effect on the response of the ice sheet to climate warming over the next decades.”"

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