The ‘zombie ice’ from the massive Greenland ice sheet will eventually raise global sea levels by at least inches on its own, according to a study released Monday.
So-called zombie ice is ice that is still attached to thicker areas of ice, but it is no longer fed by those larger glaciers.
This is because the main glaciers receive less replenishing snow. Meanwhile, this ice is melting because of climate change, said study co-author William Colgan, a glaciologist at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland.
It is dead ice. It will just melt and disappear from the ice sheet,” Colgan said in an interview with AP News. “This ice has been consigned to the ocean, regardless of the climate (emissions) scenario we take now.”
The main author of the study, Jason Box, a glaciologist with the Greenland study, added that it is “more like a foot in the grave.”
The unavoidable ten inches in the study is more than twice the sea level rise that Scientists previously expected the melting of the Greenland ice sheet.
The study in the journal Nature Climate Change said that it could reach up to 30 inches (78 centimeters). By contrast, last year’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report projected a range of 2 to 5 inches (6 to 10 centimeters) for likely sea level rise due to Greenland ice melt for the year 2100.
What the scientists did for the study was to observe the ice in equilibrium. In perfect balance, snowfall in the mountains of Greenland flows down and recharges and thickens the sides of glaciers, balancing what melts at the edges.
But in recent decades there is less replenishment and more melting, creating imbalance. The study authors looked at the ratio of what is added to what is lost and calculated that 3.3% of Greenland’s total ice volume will melt no matter what happens to the global reduction in carbon pollution, Colgan said.
“I think starving to death would be a good phrase” for what is happening to the ice, Colgan said.
One of the study authors said that more of 120 trillions of tons of ice are already doomed to melt due to the inability of the warming ice sheet to replenish its edges. When that ice melts into water, if it were concentrated just over the United States, it would be 37 feet deep.
This is the first time that Scientists estimate minimal ice loss, and subsequent sea level rise, for Greenland, one of two massive ice sheets on Earth that are slowly shrinking due to climate change from burning coal, oil and gas. natural.
Although inches doesn’t sound like much, it’s a global average. Some coastal areas will be hit harder, and high tides and storm surges could be even worse.
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