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Friday, August 11, 2006
Greenland's ice is melting at faster rate, report says
WASHINGTON -- The huge Greenland ice pack, which contains 10 percent of all the ice on Earth, has begun to melt at a dramatically faster rate in the past two years, scientists said Thursday.
Using data from a pair of NASA satellites that measure small variations in the Earth's gravity, University of Texas scientists said Greenland is losing ice into the ocean at the rate of about 57 cubic miles a year.
That would mean a net loss since the summer of 2004 of about as much water as is in Lake Erie.
The same satellites measured a net loss -- the amount of ice that melts into the ocean during the summer, minus the amount that is replaced by winter snows -- of only around 20 cubic miles per year during 2002 and 2003.
"It's kind of sobering when you look at the rate Greenland is depositing water into the ocean," said Byron Tapley of the UT Center for Space Research.
The findings confirm other calculations pointing to accelerating Greenland ice melt, and are consistent with computer models that predict the course of climate change. They are being reported today in Science Magazine by Tapley and UT scientists C.R. Wilson and J.L. Chen.
If all of Greenland's ice melted -- a process scientists say would take centuries, even at the current rate -- the additional water would raise the global sea level by about 20 feet.
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