Meltdown

last updated 8 January 2015

Former glacier, Greenland

Greenland’s glaciers are melting more than twice as fast as they were 10 years ago, scientists from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab at CalTech said last week. Warmer air temperatures have increased the overall shrinkage of the Greenland ice sheet from 91 cubic kilometers per year in 1996 to 138 cubic kilometers per year in 2000—and to 224 cubic km per year in 2005. That means ocean levels will rise much faster than current models show, swamping islands and coastlines. “The implications are global,” said British glacier expert Julian Dowdeswell of Cambridge University. “We are not talking about walking along the sea front on a nice summer day. We are talking of the worst storm settings, the biggest storm surges.”