Greenland ice sheet loss speeding up
24 September 2006
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Greenland’s massive ice sheet is melting much more quickly than scientists had estimated as recently as last year, according to research published on Wednesday.
An analysis of satellite observations shows the rate of ice loss increased by 2.5 times between the periods April 2002 to April 2004 and May 2004 to April 2006, most of it in southern Greenland.
The researchers calculated that Greenland lost roughly 164 cubic miles of ice from April 2004 to April 2006 — more than the volume of water in Lake Erie.
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Many scientists fear that manmade emissions of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide are behind warming temperatures around the globe.
Greenland harbors about 10 percent of the world’s freshwater in its ice sheet, which is up to two miles thick in places. It is so huge that if it melted entirely sea levels across the world would rise by about 20 feet, Tavi Murray of the University of Wales in Swansea said in a commentary on the research.
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