It's been awhile since I posted anything about climate change, and I took a break from Twitter debates, too. But this article was so important (and definitive) that I had to note it.
First results from NASA's ICESat-2 mission map 16 years of melting ice sheets
It's easy to summarize what's happening, to whit: the Earth is getting warmer, the ice sheets are melting, and the increased melting is raising sea levels.
See? Easy! Well, technologically speaking, it took a superior satellite and a fabulous laser.
"In a new study published in the journal Science on April 30, scientists found the net loss of ice from Antarctica, along with Greenland's shrinking ice sheet, has been responsible for 0.55 inches (14 millimeters) of sea level rise to the global ocean since 2003. In Antarctica, sea level rise is being driven by the loss of the floating ice shelves melting in a warming ocean. The ice shelves help hold back the flow of land-based ice into the ocean.To summarize the article, Greenland accounts for about 2/3 of the rise, Antarctica about 1/3. That's not good, considering the warming of the Arctic and the sensitivity of Greenland.
The findings come from the Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite 2 (ICESat-2), which was launched into orbit in fall 2018 and began taking detailed global elevation measurements, including over Earth's frozen regions."
Also, the thickness of the ice sheet in the middle of Antarctica is increasing (more snow, due to warmer ocean waters around the continent providing more humidity) but the losses due to melting on the edges and the Antarctic Peninsula are larger.
The paper: Ben Smith, Helen A. Fricker, Alex S. Gardner, Brooke Medley, Johan Nilsson, Fernando S. Paolo. "Pervasive ice sheet mass loss reflects competing ocean and atmosphere processes". Science, 2020 DOI: 10.1126/science.aaz5845
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