NASA Says It’s Getting Warmer
Two studies were recently published, documenting changes in the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets, confirming that climate warming is changing how much water remains locked in Earth’s largest storehouses of ice and snow (Greenland pictured at top and right). As if there could be any doubt regarding their conclusions, NASA recently published a satellite study of both regions and goes so far as to directly tie these changes to global warming, describing the survey as “the most comprehensive” ever for both regions.

{ ScienceBlogs }

Glaciers around the world have been receding at around the same pace for over 100 years. Research published by the National Academy of Sciences last week indicates that the Peruvian glacier on p. 53-53 probably disappeared a few thousand years ago.

Greenland was warmer in the 1920s and 1930s than it is now. A recent study by Dr. Peter Chylek of the University of California, Riverside, addressed the question of whether man is directly responsible for recent warming: “An important question is to what extent can the current (1995-2005) temperature increase in Greenland coastal regions be interpreted as evidence of man-induced global warming? Although there has been a considerable temperature increase during the last decade (1995 to 2005) a similar increase and at a faster rate occurred during the early part of the 20th century (1920 to 1930) when carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gases could not be a cause. The Greenland warming of 1920 to 1930 demonstrates that a high concentration of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases is not a necessary condition for period of warming to arise. The observed 1995-2005 temperature increase seems to be within a natural variability of Greenland climate.

{ National Review }

Greenland has an area of 2.2 million km2 — slightly more than three times the size of Texas — and a population of 56,375 humans. Greenland is a self-governing colony of Denmark. A “flat to gradually sloping icecap covers all but a narrow, mountainous, barren, rocky coast”. The ice sheet covers about 80% of the land, and contains about 2.5 million cubic kilometers of ice. If all that ice were to melt, it would increase global sea level by about 7m, or 23 feet. Until very recently, climatologists thought that, although global warming might melt the icesheet eventually, it would be very unlikely to occur on any timescale that we would care about. However…

{ The oil Drum }

READ MORE >> global warming | January 17th, 2007