Melting Greenland Ice Could Raise Ocean Seven Meters
Pastor Dale Morgan
Melting Greenland Ice Could Raise Ocean Seven Meters*
by Deborah Jones
Vancouver (AFP) May 03, 2007
The world's oceans could rise by up to seven meters if Greenland's ice
cap entirely melts because of global warming, climate scientists said
Tuesday. Glaciers on Greenland, the world's most icy land mass, are now
melting most quickly where they are in contact with surrounding ocean,
while ice in the high centre remains intact, said Garry Clarke, a
professor at the University of British Columbia in this western Canadian
city.
But if global warming causes the freezing level to move higher, the loss
of ice would be worse than Greenland experienced in previous
interglacial periods dating back hundreds of thousands of years.
"It would be the complete disappearance of the Greenland ice sheet,"
Clarke told a meeting of scientists and journalists. "We still don't
know how quickly our rendezvous with this will occur."
The scientists said much research remains to be done because climate
models on Arctic ice sheets are inadequate. Their research contributes
to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which will release
another report in early May.
Much of their data, the scientists said, is obtained by two satellite
tracking systems and gravitational physics.
The speakers were from the Canadian Foundation for Climate and
Atmospheric Sciences, which is composed of scientists from universities
throughout Canada.
Canada will be the country most impacted by global warming, said the
group chair Gordon McBean, a scientist and former federal government
deputy minister.
But the polar cryosphere -- Arctic ice -- is a focus of the entire
international scientific community, said McBean, "because the potential
for sea level rise exists primarily in the polar cryosphere."
Shawn Marshall, a geographer from the University of Calgary, said "the
state of our knowledge with large ice masses is not up to snuff ...
there's a lot of uncertainty in the forecast."
The researchers' work, said Marshall, has a direct impact on predictions
of flooding in low-lying countries, and on risk calculations such as how
the United Kingdom should rebuild the barrier on the River Thames.
Several of the scientists expressed dismay with the recent announcement
by Canada's federal government that Canada will not try to reach the
landmark emissions reduction targets set by the international Kyoto accord.
"It's an absolute disgrace," said Richard Peltier, lead investigator
with the group and a physicist at the University of Toronto.
The research group's funding is due to run out in 2010, said McBean, and
while the scientists have asked Canada's federal government for a
commitment for stable future funding, they have been waiting one year
for an answer.
"We have no funds to start new initiatives," he told the scientists and
reporters.
Asked if international funding agencies will contribute money for the
cryosphere research, McBean replied angrily: "Other countries contribute
a lot more to international science than Canada does. We claim to be a
G8 country, and we should act like one."
Source: Agence France-Presse