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Greenland's melting ice raised global sea level by 2.2mm in two months
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- TheSpiceIsLife 7y agoIt’s hard to get excited about 2.2mm. I’m not saying it isn’t a problem, I’m just saying it’s not a scale humans are likely to panic about. If it were 2.2m in one month you can bet your left shoe we’d panic.
- mscasts 7y agoWell, it's global sea level. It's pretty significant and just shows how fast the sea level could change if larger chunks of ice would slip into the water and melt.
- easytiger 7y agoThe sea raises and lowers by up to 16000mm every day in parts in of Canada during spring tides
- _ph_ 7y agoThat would be over 600 meters, impressive :p. EDIT: the parent author corrected his entry to still impressive 16 meters. And of course tides/sea level is almost the same duality as weather/climate.
- CapitalistCartr 7y agoUp to 16 meters.
- easytiger 7y agoEdited to 16000. No idea what I was typing!
- yiyus 7y ago16000mm is 16m. Still impressive.
- reimertz 7y ago> And of course tides/sea level is almost the same duality as weather/climate. I tried to argue for the same point but lacked the word “duality” in my corpus. Thank you, will use in the future!
- heavyset_go 7y ago2.2mm is an average. What happens is that in some places high tides are higher than that, along with the low tides.
- reimertz 7y ago“It’s snowing today so global warming is a hoax.” weather ≠ climate It blows my mind that to some people, 2.2mm isn’t a big deal. Seriously, the size of earth, the amount of coastlines, the amount of rivers connecting to the ocean, the snowballing effect on increased melting? What is it that people don’t get?
- easytiger 7y agoWhere did I say it was? Can you perhaps quote the part?
- reimertz 7y agoI’m just saying the mention / comparison you are making is very similar to that kind of rhetoric. Also, it doesn’t relate to the actual problem but can be used to undermine the seriousness if these values are true.
- iso1631 7y agoI suspect people think that along the lines of A high tide causes floods, but that's like a 4000mm tide. What difference does it matter if it's 4002mm? And they'd be mostly right - if it was just 2mm higher that wouldn't be an issue. What's missing is 1) 2mm is average, some places it's far higher 2) 2mm in 2 months is 12cm in a decade, or 30cm after a 25 year mortgage
- aww_dang 7y agoIf all of the world's ice were to melt the oceans would rise by only 70 meters. Warmist National Geographic offers that it would take 5000 years for all of the world's ice to melt. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2013/09/rising-seas-ice-melt-new-shoreline-maps/ https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2013/09/rising-s...
- adrianN 7y ago"Only" 70m.
- dmos62 7y agoIf it's exponential growth, then that's pretty scary.
- atonalfreerider 7y agoHas anyone considered the albeit short term emissions impact of grounding flights due to COVID-19? Airlines have in some cases experienced over 70% reduction in volume in the past weeks[0]. Not to mention, so many companies have been forced to adopt remote working practices and social life has been forced into a sedentary routine. I wonder what the inertial impact of this pandemic will be on emissions over the coming years. [0] https://www.economist.com/business/2020/03/15/coronavirus-is-grounding-the-worlds-airlines https://www.economist.com/business/2020/03/15/coronavirus-is...
- jupp0r 7y agoAir travel makes up for 2.5% of global carbon emissions. Not really worth micro optimizing a lot in those 2.5% if you asked me. At least not if you can focus efforts in energy production and cars instead.
- rb666 7y agoYa think? "Unless market constraints are put in place, growth in aviation emissions will result in the sector's emissions amounting to all or nearly all of the annual global CO 2 emissions budget by mid-century, if climate change is to be held to a temperature increase of 2 °C or less." (from: https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Environmental_impact_of_aviation https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Environmental_impact_of_aviation)
- ekianjo 7y agoGrowth is not something that continues forever. There's already constraints on the aviation industry (lack of pilots, congested routes) that will anyway slow down the growth significantly as time goes.
- ekianjo 7y agoThe same links says: "The central case estimate is that aviation's contribution could grow to five percent of the total contribution by 2050 if action is not taken to tackle these emissions, though the highest scenario is 15 percent." So which is it? 5%/15% or 100% by 2050?
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- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- xaxsacsdaffbnk 7y agoIs it even solid science to measure sea levels over 2 months? How do you measure "sea level"? It seems normal that ice melts as summer comes around. So there would be fluctuations in sea level? How do they account for all the possible variations to establish a sea level number?
- ekianjo 7y agoThis, and satellites don't have millimeter-level precision of sea level measurement. Not even close.
- imtringued 7y agoWe also don't have nano meter precision calipers and yet we managed to measure the size of atoms...
- yodsanklai 7y agoI suppose they measure the missing ice, and deduce the sea level.
- xaxsacsdaffbnk 7y agoAnd how is sea level defined - the average over the year? So more ice has melted than usually? Even then, it seems normal that not the same amount of ice would melt every year?
- bregma 7y agoThey don't measure the missing ice either. They estimate it based on all kinds of things (mostly models based on what they guess the answer should be). Some of the actual measurements include the deviation in satellite orbit as it passes over Greenland, from which they estimate the change in gravity, which leads directly to an estimate of the change in mass. Since the rock is unlikely to be changing on the time scale of a year or so, they assume it's a change in ice mass. Given a typical annual precipitation of zero in central Greenland, it's a safe bet that any change is mass is due to ice melt.
- ekianjo 7y agoI can't find 2.2 mm mentioned anywhere in the study they refer to. Where is that number coming from? https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1029/2020GL087291 https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1029/2020...
- brlewis 7y agoI can't find it either. I only see gigatonnes. Even with a naive calculation that assumes no ice reclaimed elsewhere, I get 1.8mm. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1zC2c30kIkbx39v0gyY1PrPJEFJW4LBMkYxW_RbdcKYc/edit#gid=0 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1zC2c30kIkbx39v0gyY1P...
- Arnt 7y agoWhy is that naïve?
- brlewis 7y agoBecause in the opposite hemisphere, water is turning to snow and ice.
- Arnt 7y agoI see, good point. However, it seems insignificant, since that process happens relative to the surface of the ocean, not to the bottom of the ocean. Assume that the top 1cm of sea water in the southern hemisphere evaporates, turns to clouds, and lands on Antarctica in the form of snow. If that top 1cm of the ocean is 2.2mm (or 1.8mm) further from the ocean bottom, I don't see why that would increase (or decrease) evaporation.
- misja111 7y agoThe source of the article does mention Antarctica: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/2020GL087291 https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/2020... "In Antarctica, ongoing high mass losses in the Amundsen Sea Embayment of West Antarctica, the Antarctic Peninsula, and Wilkes Land in East Antarctica cumulate to 2130, 560, and 370 Gigatonnes, respectively, since 2002. A cumulative mass gain of 980 Gigatonnes in Queen Maud Land since 2009, however, led to a pause in the acceleration in mass loss from Antarctica after 2016."
- pupdogg 7y agoI'm not buying this. Someone please explain, in detail, how 2.2mm of sea level can be measured precisely? What kind of tolerance are we talking about? 2.2mm +/- 5mm?
- noiv 7y agoIf you have volume and divide by surface area you'll get height.
- assblaster 7y agoSo is the sea level being measured or estimated?
- pupdogg 7y agoHow do you accurately (down to mm precision) determine volume of a moving target?
- bregma 7y ago... and what's the precision on the volume? How many significant digits?
- gridlockd 7y agoCan somebody explain to me what the big problem of sea levels rising is. Sure, at that rate, or even at that 100 times that rate, at some point in the not-so-close future the coastline will move inward significantly. Beach properties will become diving attractions. I don't think I care. Tell my why I should care.
- chipperyman573 7y agoSea levels are an easy way to measure the effects of global warming. Since the ocean has so much water, massive changes need to happen for it to rise even a little (for example 2.2mm).
- vixen99 7y agoMoreover Antarctica has an estimated ice volume of around 26.5 million cubic kilometers (most recent estimation - I believe). I estimate that cumulative melting since 1992 (2325 gt) has reduced that volume by 0.001%. Info & data at http://imbie.org/news/publications/ http://imbie.org/news/publications/ and http://imbie.org/data-downloads/ http://imbie.org/data-downloads/
- reimertz 7y agoIf you only have yourself to take into consideration, I assume you have the luxury to relocate and have the economic bandwidth to do so. But I challenge you to widen your viewpoint; there are so many people out in the world where 1cm would mean becoming environmental refugees. If you don’t care about that, there isn’t much I can do. Finally, I want to point out what that means; you lack empathy for those people.
- gridlockd 7y ago> But I challenge you to widen your viewpoint; there are so many people out in the world where 1cm would mean becoming environmental refugees. See, I don't believe that to be true. Sea levels already rose 7.5cm in the past 30 years, where are all these "sea level refugees" specifically? > Finally, I want to point out what that means; you lack of empathy for those people. Of course I don't have empathy for people that I do not believe exist. I also have trouble developing empathy for hypothetical people that may have to migrate in 100 years time. People are going to have/want to migrate, no matter what. So did my recent ancestors, as well as my ancient ancestors. I don't see that as a big problem, I don't believe in ethnostates of any kind. Refugees welcome!
- propogandist 7y agoGeologists studying glaciers have determined we're in an Interglacial Period, where glaciers are contracting and it's also cyclical [1] There's also natural wonders like the Great Blue Hole, a marine sinkhole off the coast in Belize, which show this has been going on for some time. It was "formed during several episodes of Quaternary Glaciation when sea levels were much lower.. as the ocean began to rise again, the [124M] cave was flooded" [2] [1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaternary_glaciation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaternary_glaciation [2]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Blue_Hole#cite_note-NASA-2 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Blue_Hole#cite_note-NA...
- mysterydip 7y agoI was curious on the math for all this. Surface area of earth = 510,064,472 km2 70 percent water = 357,045,130 km2 2.2mm = 0.0000022 km volume = 785.499 km3 GIS area 1,710,000 km2 div vol by area = 459.3 mm melting 1kg of ice from 0C = 333.55kJ density of ice = 919kg/m3 785,499,000,000 m3 x 333.55 = 262,003,191,450,000 kJ 1J/s = 1w 2 months = 5,184,000s = 50,540,739 kJ/s = 50.540 GJ/s = 181,944 GWh making it the 24th largest electricity producer in the world (if it were all electricity). That's pretty incredible!
- misja111 7y agoI got inspired by your calculation to fact check the article's claim of the 2.2mm see level rise. They apparently base this on the reported melting of 600 Billion tons of ice as stated in the article. 600 Billion (metric?) ton = 600000 Billion kg (or liter water) = 600 km3 This doesn't quite add up. I wonder where they got the 2.2 mm from ..
- PaulRobinson 7y agoJust been checking http://grid.iamkate.com http://grid.iamkate.com and in the UK as a country it seems to me that we're about 7% down on power usage week on week as a result of people WFH. The reduction in fossil fuels, the fact people are not necessarily able to get their favourite foods (and there was already a backdrop of a rise in plant-based diets in the UK anyway), the lack of commuting and travel, it all adds up to me thinking our emissions are going to be much, much lower this year, at least in the UK. I'll be fascinated to see how much of that sticks, and whether we start to see any reversals on data like this. Doubtful, but if habits change in the next six months for good, well, it's a silver lining. We can dream.