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Glaciologist: "Sea level projections will need to be revised upward."

October 24, 2010

The headline quote is over a month old, but, according to Google, it hasn’t been reprinted anywhere beyond the story on the official website of Denmark.  That article opened:

New calculations show that the amount of melted inland ice in Greenland is 25-50% higher in 2010 than normally.

The big Arctic story this month has been NOAA’s 2010 Arctic Report Card, which found that, thanks to human-caused global warming, “Arctic of old is gone, experts warn,” as MNSBC put it.   One NOAA scientist explained the importance of the Arctic as the canary in the coal mine: “Whatever is going to happen in the rest of the world happens first, and to the greatest extent, in the Arctic.”

Greenland climate in 2010 is marked by record-setting high air temperatures, ice loss by melting, and marine-terminating glacier area loss. Summer seasonal average (June-August) air temperatures around Greenland were 0.6 to 2.4°C above the 1971-2000 baseline and were highest in the west. A combination of a warm and dry 2009-2010 winter and the very warm summer resulted in the highest melt rate since at least 1958 and an area and duration of ice sheet melting that was above any previous year on record since at least 1978. The largest recorded glacier area loss observed in Greenland occurred this summer at Petermann Glacier, where 290 km2 of ice broke away. The rate of area loss in marine-terminating glaciers this year (419 km2) was 3.4 times that of the previous 8 years, when regular observations are available.

I remember reading in the Post not so long ago - a govt minister was quoted - Bangkok is not under threat from sea level rise due to polar melting. Thailand is too far from the poles to be affected.

I am sure the Editor let this go to print for all the right reasons. I can't remember who said it, maybe someone in Samak's cabinet.....

If and when land-situated ice does begin to discharge, BKK is bang in trouble. For this reason alone I will not be buying the Condo of my dreams in the nation's Capital.

Seafra -- Smart move. The Gov. of Thailand is guilty of not telling the people the Truth regarding Bangkok's vulnerability to sea level rise and flooding because of Global Warming.