Greenland melting faster than five years ago, study says
We hate to give you bad news without some good, so here goes. The bad news from a study published this week in Science is that, by comparing satellite data from 2002-2005 to earlier data, researchers have determined that Greenland’s ice sheet is melting about three times faster than it was five years ago. Put another way, about 57 cubic miles of ice melts there each year, enough to cause an annual 0.02 inch sea-level rise. The good news: in time, Greenland may be less of a misnomer. (There, don’t you feel better?) Meanwhile, the other side of the world is also going the way of the Wicked Witch: according to recent research, between 2002 and 2005, at least 36 cubic miles of Antarctic ice melted annually. Computer projections had suggested that warmer temps in the region would lead to greater precipitation, compensating for the melt. But another study in this week’s Science determined that in the past 50 years, there’s been no real increase in Antarctica’s precipitation. We’ve gotta stop reading that rag.
