Showing posts with label Rising Sea Levels. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Rising Sea Levels. Show all posts

Thursday, October 29, 2015

Greenland Is Melting Away

Greenland Is Melting Away

By Coral Davenport, Josh Haner, Larry Buchanan and Derek Watkins
The New York Times
10-27-15

     On the Greenland Ice Sheet — The midnight sun still gleamed at 1 a.m. across the brilliant expanse of the Greenland ice sheet. Brandon Overstreet, a doctoral candidate in hydrology at the University of Wyoming, picked his way across the frozen landscape, clipped his climbing harness to an anchor in the ice and crept toward the edge of a river that rushed downstream toward an enormous sinkhole.

If he fell in, “the death rate is 100 percent,” said Mr. Overstreet’s friend and fellow researcher, Lincoln Pitcher.

But Mr. Overstreet’s task, to collect critical data from the river, is essential to understanding one of the most consequential impacts of global warming. The scientific data he and a team of six other researchers collect here could yield groundbreaking information on the rate at which the melting of the Greenland ice sheet, one of the biggest and fastest-melting chunks of ice on Earth, will drive up sea levels in the coming decades. The full melting of Greenland’s ice sheet could increase sea levels by about 20 feet. [...]

Friday, August 28, 2015

Watching Rising Seas From Space | VIDEO

Watching Rising Seas From Space

By NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
8-25-15

      Oceanographer Josh Willis from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory narrates this video about the causes of sea level rise and how sea level has changed over the last two decades as observed by the Jason series of satellite missions.

Three Feet of Sea Level Rise Is Unavoidable, says NASA

Sea Level Rise Projection Map
Credit: University of Arizona's Department of Geosciences

By Taylor Hill
www.takepart.com
8-27-15

     Ocean levels around the world have risen about three inches since 1992 thanks to warming temperatures owing to the burning of fossil fuels. Now, new NASA research shows sea levels will likely rise three feet in the coming decades, and it’s too late to do anything about it.

The findings are based on satellite data that looked at sea levels, the amount of heat that’s already stored in the oceans, and how much water is being added by melting ice sheets in the Arctic and Antarctica.

“It’s pretty certain we are locked into at least three feet of sea-level rise, and probably more,” Steve Nerem, lead researcher on NASA’s Sea Level Change Team, said on a conference call Wednesday. [...]

Saturday, August 22, 2015

NASA To Discuss Rising Sea Levels

NASA To Discuss Rising Sea Levels

By NASA
8-20-15

     In a series of media opportunities Wednesday, Aug. 26 through Friday, Aug. 28, NASA experts will present an up-to-date global outlook on current conditions and future projections of sea level rise.

From fieldwork on the Greenland ice sheet this summer, to new satellite views of sea level changes around the world, NASA’s “Rising Seas” events will provide the latest assessment of scientific understanding of this global environmental issue.

NASA will host a media teleconference at 12:30 p.m. EDT on Wednesday, Aug. 26 to discuss recent insights on sea level rise and the continuing challenge of predicting how fast and how much sea level will rise. The panelists for this briefing are:
• Michael Freilich, director of NASA’s Earth Science Division at the agency’s headquarters in Washington

• Steve Nerem, lead for NASA’s Sea Level Change Team at the University of Colorado in Boulder

• Josh Willis, oceanographer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California

• Eric Rignot, glaciologist at the University of California, Irvine and JPL
To participate, media must email their name and affiliation to Steve Cole at stephen.e.cole@nasa.gov by 11 a.m. on Wednesday. Media and the public also may ask questions during the briefing on Twitter using the hashtag #askNASA.

Audio of the briefing will stream live here.

On Thursday, Aug. 27 NASA scientists will be available for live satellite television interviews about the latest sea level research and new visualizations of global sea level changes and ice loss in Greenland and Antarctica. Interviews are available from 5:45 to 11:30 a.m. and 1 to 5 p.m. For more information, contact Michelle Handleman at michelle.z.handleman@nasa.gov by Wednesday.

At 1 p.m. on Friday, Aug. 28, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, will host a live TV program about agency research into how and why the massive Greenland ice sheet is changing. The event features scientists actively conducting field work in Greenland, along with extensive video footage of their work performed over this summer. Panelists include:
• Tom Wagner, cryosphere program scientist with NASA’s Earth Science Division

• Laurence Smith, chair of the University of California, Los Angeles Department of Geography

• Mike Bevis, professor of geodynamics at Ohio State University in Columbus

• Sophie Nowicki, physical scientist at Goddard

• Josh Willis, JPL
Media and social media are invited to attend the event. To register for the limited seats available, email your name, affiliation and social media account names to Aries Keck at aries.keck@nasa.gov by noon on Thursday. Registrants should plan to arrive at the Goddard Visitor’s Center at 8800 Greenbelt Rd. by 12 p.m. on Friday.

The Friday program will air live on NASA TV and stream online here.

To ask questions via social media during the televised event, use the hashtag #askNASA.

Follow the conversation about NASA’s ongoing research into sea level rise on social media with the new @NASA_SeaLevel accounts on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ and the hashtag #EarthRightNow.

As Earth’s oceans continue to warm, and its ice sheets continue to show signs of accelerated change, NASA is pursuing answers to how quickly seas could rise in the future. Scientists worldwide use NASA data to tackle some of the toughest questions about how our planet is changing. Using the vantage point of space, NASA is pioneering research into how changes in the ocean, ice sheets, glaciers and Earth’s surface combine to produce global changes in sea level.

For more information about NASA's Earth science programs go here. ...

Sunday, October 07, 2012

Arctic Ice Melt, Sea Level Rise May Pose Imminent Threat To Island Nations, Climate Scientist Says


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Arctic Ice Melt

By James Gerken
The Huffington Post
10-5-12

     Low-lying island nations threatened by rising sea levels this century could see the disastrous consequences of climate change far sooner than expected, according to one of the world's leading climate scientists.

In the wake of last month's discovery that the extent of Arctic sea ice coverage hit a record low this year, climate scientist Michael Mann told the Guardian that "Island nations that have considered the possibility of evacuation at some point, like Tuvalu, may have to be contending those sort of decisions within the matter of a decade or so."

Mann, who is the director of Pennsylvania State University's Earth System Science Center, said that current melting trends show sea ice is "declining faster than the models predict."

"The models have typically predicted that will not happen for decades but the measurements that are coming in tell us it is already happening so once again we are decades ahead of schedule . . ..