“I find it hard to exaggerate the peril, this is the new extinction and we are half way through it. We are in terrible, terrible trouble and the longer we wait to do something about it the worse it is going to get.” Sir David Attenborough
Antarctic and Arctic ice caps are melting six times faster than in the 1990s, according to climate scientists, who are sending even more urgent code red alarms for world leaders to act. They won’t move, of course, and as a result, we can expect ecosystem and economic collapse within decades.
For those of us in the first world, the climate crisis is still treated as a future threat even though millions of people are currently being impacted.
The coronavirus threat is getting the critical media attention that it deserves. The danger is indeed imminent, and most people are taking measures to protect themselves, their friends, and their families. Because I am pushing sixty-five and the fact that I have underlying health issues, I am mesmerized by the daily news of Trump’s incompetence, and of the protective measures necessary to slow the spread of the virus. I am conscious of the fact that it is not all about me and my health. It is about the survival of future generations, and if we don’t address the urgency of the climate crisis with the same media attention and determination to act as we have with COVID-19, we will be dealing with billions of deaths as a result.
Below are a couple of climate deglaciation crisis articles that have not received the attention they deserve. I share them with you.
The news from the European Space Agency is grim.
The findings, published in two separate papers in Nature, show that Greenland and Antarctica lost 6.4 trillion tonnes of ice between 1992 and 2017 – pushing global sea levels up by 17.8 millimetres.
Of the total sea level rise coming from melting polar ice sheets, around 60% (10.6 millimetres) was due to Greenland ice losses and 40% was due to Antarctica (7.2 millimetres).
The combined rate of ice loss has risen by a factor of six in just three decades, up from 81 billion tonnes per year in the 1990s to 475 billion tonnes per year in the 2010s. This means that polar ice sheets are now responsible for a third of all sea level rise.
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“If Antarctica and Greenland continue to track the worst-case climate warming scenario, they will cause an extra 17 centimetres of sea level rise by the end of the century. This would mean 400 million people are at risk at annual coastal flooding by 2100. These are not unlikely events with small impacts; they are already underway and will be devastating for coastal communities.”
Without rapid cuts to carbon emissions, the analysis indicates there could be a rise in sea levels that would leave 400 million people exposed to coastal flooding each year by the end of the century.
Rising sea levels are the one of the most damaging long-term impacts of the climate crisis, and the contribution of Greenland and Antarctica is accelerating. The new analysis updates and combines recent studies of the ice masses and predicts that 2019 will prove to have been a record-breaking year when the most recent data is processed.
The average annual loss of ice from Greenland and Antarctica in the 2010s was 475 billion metric tons – six times greater than the 81 billion metric tons a year lost in the 1990s. In total, the two ice caps lost 6.4 trillion metric tons of ice from 1992 to 2017, with melting in Greenland responsible for 60 percent of that figure.
The IPCC’s most recent mid-range prediction for global sea level rise in 2100 is 53 centimeters (cm). But the new analysis suggests that if current trends continue the oceans will rise by an additional 17 cm.
“Every centimeter of sea level rise leads to coastal flooding and coastal erosion, disrupting people’s lives around the planet,” said Andrew Shepherd, of the University of Leeds. He said the extra 17 cm would mean the number of people exposed to coastal flooding each year rising from 360 million to 400 million. “These are not unlikely events with small impacts,” he said. “They are already under way and will be devastating for coastal communities.”
Johanna Beckmann of the EGU blog writes on how meltwater moving under the Greenland ice cap erodes the ice cliffs where they meet the sea.
But climate change has already put the ice sheet into imbalance, resulting in sea level rise. The warming climate is melting more ice on the surface of the Greenland Ice Sheet than it used to. This is well captured in ice sheet models already. However, our models are having trouble in simulating what is happening under the surface for each of the hundreds of glaciers that drain the ice sheet. These glaciers are retreating and speeding up, transporting more ice into the ocean then before. But why? The models don’t seem to be able to reproduce this speed up.
The key is in the oceans. Observations show that the ocean surrounding the Greenland Ice Sheet is warming and, surprisingly, at the glacier cliffs, where the glaciers meet the ocean, water is upwelling from deep below the ocean surface. This is called a water plume and is melting the glaciers from beneath.
As the snow melts at the surface of the glaciers, the meltwater produced on top of the glacier travels down via crevasses to the base of the glacier, where it can flow underneath the glacier, along the bedrock on which it rests, and finally into the ocean (Figure 1). This meltwater is fresh (i.e. not saline) and once it becomes surrounded by the denser, salty ocean, it will naturally start to rise due to the density contrast. Because this upwelling is turbulent, it can increase the melting of the glacier by entraining the warmer ocean water and putting it in contact with the glacier ice. Think about the ice cube in your drink. Stirring the drink – adding ‘turbulence’- will melt the ice cube faster! And if you add warmer water (the warming of the ocean), your ice cubes melt more rapidly too.
So, the warming climate is melting the Greenland Ice Sheet in two ways: at the surface, and from below through ocean mixing.
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One might say that the warming ocean is the most important player in predicting future sea level rise. However, we have modeled the behavior of twelve glaciers of the Greenland Ice Sheet (Figure 2, see also Box 1 for why those twelve glaciers in particular). Our models show that adding this plume-driven melting process will increase sea level rise more than three-fold by 2100. The freshwater input from below the glaciers (the former surface melt) is just as important as the warming ocean water. Together, they drive the turbulent plume which can result in significant melting of the glaciers’ fronts and further glacier retreat.
Dawn Stover writes in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists on how Trump has fucked up the climate and coronavirus responses in six similar ways.
Here in Washington state, a spokesman for the nursing home that is the epicenter of a coronavirus outbreak said on Sunday that he and his colleagues “had seen some residents go from no symptoms to death in just a matter of hours.” COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, does not necessarily progress little by little toward a critical stage.
The spokesman’s comments about the unpredictability and volatility of COVID-19 reminded me of how our planet is responding to climate change. While scientists measure climate change in fractions of degrees Celsius, its symptoms stubbornly refuse to emerge slowly and incrementally. We can no longer expect that weather patterns and glaciers and ecosystems will continue to change bit by bit. They may reach a tipping point and then collapse suddenly and perhaps even irreversibly—like a patient in a nursing home who seems fine one day but is dead the next.
As with climate change, the impacts of the coronavirus are unevenly distributed. Some places are harder hit than others, and some people are more vulnerable than others. Moreover, the Trump administration’s response to COVID-19 has been remarkably similar to how it has handled climate change: with a combination of denial and delaying tactics that will ultimately cost the public far more than taking quick action. And not just in dollars: Coronavirus denial could get people killed, by discouraging them from taking precautionary measures.
Stay safe.