3 ms·
It's a serious situation for sure.....but I guess I'd expect the part of the world that IS ice to be melting faster than the parts of the world that aren't.
by scld 4y ago
It's a serious situation for sure.....but I guess I'd expect the part of the world that IS ice to be melting faster than the parts of the world that aren't.
- rob74 4y agoYeah, the original title "The Arctic has warmed nearly four times faster than the globe since 1979" (https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-022-00498-3 https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-022-00498-3, which another commenter mentioned) makes much more sense. You could actually compare the rates at which Arctic glaciers and glaciers in other parts of the world are receding, but I doubt it's four times faster?!
- defrost 4y agoIce is a major buffer the keeps global mean tempreture in check. Once gone, things get very serious. The amount of energy that melts a tonne of ice at 0 C to a tonne of water at the same tempreture will raise that same tonne of water from 0 C to over 79 C. ie. Energy going to melting ice isn't going toward raising sea and air tempretures .. once there is no ice to melt that same energy will direct itself toward cooking things up. A lot.
- blueflow 4y agoThe geological temperature recording disagrees with you. Greenhouse climates (with no polar caps) were more stable than ice-house climate configurations with polar caps, with the latter leading to milankovitch cycles.
- defrost 4y agoThe "geological temperature recording" have zero effect on the latent and specific heat of water which form the basis of my comment. Furthermore Milankovitch cycles induce mild climate changes but climate changes don't "lead to milankovitch cycles" . . .
- pcrh 4y agoWhile it's true that the latent heat of ice to water is very high, it is not likely an important factor in global warming. Polar ice doesn't cool the world as an ice cube in a drink might. The much more important effect of losing polar ice is the albedo effect, that is how much solar radiation is reflected back into space by ice and snow vs how much is absorbed by exposed ground. Just in case: losing ice in the polar oceans also doesn't increase sea levels (since floating ice has less volume than the water it floats on), but losing ice that lies over land, such as in Greenland, directly contributes to rising sea levels. Losing the albedo of floating ice has the same effect on warming as does losing snow or ice on land.