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Earth Science

Earth is Losing Ice Faster Today Than in the Mid-1990s, Study Suggests (reuters.com) 77

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
Earth's ice is melting faster today than in the mid-1990s, new research suggests, as climate change nudges global temperatures ever higher. From a report: Altogether, an estimated 28 trillion metric tons of ice have melted away from the world's sea ice, ice sheets and glaciers since the mid-1990s. Annually, the melt rate is now about 57 percent faster than it was three decades ago, scientists report in a study published Monday in the journal The Cryosphere. "It was a surprise to see such a large increase in just 30 years," said co-author Thomas Slater, a glaciologist at Leeds University in Britain. While the situation is clear to those depending on mountain glaciers for drinking water, or relying on winter sea ice to protect coastal homes from storms, the world's ice melt has begun to grab attention far from frozen regions, Slater noted.
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Earth is Losing Ice Faster Today Than in the Mid-1990s, Study Suggests More

Earth is Losing Ice Faster Today Than in the Mid-1990s, Study Suggests

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  • This is slashdot (Score:4, Funny)

    by ArchieBunker ( 132337 ) on Monday January 25, 2021 @11:06AM (#60989060)

    So I'm going to start yelling about how scientists aren't looking at the data correctly or that they couldn't accurately measure temperature until the 1980s.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by garyisabusyguy ( 732330 )

      Or bring up some outlier studies that were never accepted by the scientific community like the coming ice age

      • Or bring up some outlier studies that were never accepted by the scientific community like the coming ice age

        Those were accepted by the scientific community. They are still accepted today. The difference is that an ice age isn't expected for ~1000 years or so.

        in the 1950s, it wasn't clear in the scientific community whether the ice age would come sooner, or global warming would come sooner. Or how strong the effects of each would be.

        • sure, sure...

          Actually worth reading entire article, particularly the mis-use of the unsupported study by Hannity ... the same time as some scientists were suggesting we might be facing another ice age, a greater number published contradicting studies. Their papers showed that the growing amount of greenhouse gasses that humans were putting into the atmosphere would cause much greater warming – warming that would exert a much greater influence on global temperature than any possible natural or human-ca

  • It's what should be expected (Score:4, Insightful)

    by HiThere ( 15173 ) <charleshixsn@ear ... .net minus punct> on Monday January 25, 2021 @11:19AM (#60989112)

    Ice melts faster when it's in a warmer location. The Arctic, and I assume the Antarctic, are warming faster than the rest of the planet. So the ice there is melting faster. And the part that's too cold to melt is getting closer to melting temperature. This is just confirmation of what should be expected before you check. It's good to check, but the result is hardly surprising.

    • P.S.: That comment was a bit oversimplified. Mt. Everest is losing ice faster than it was also. Because the air around it is warmer, which gets the ice closer to melting, so any warm day melts more ice. Etc.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by cusco ( 717999 )

        There are scores of large cities worldwide that depend on melting glaciers for water year-round. When the glaciers are gone they're going to only have water during the rainy season.

        • There are scores of large cities worldwide that depend on melting glaciers for water year-round. When the glaciers are gone they're going to only have water during the rainy season.

          Scores of cities? Maybe. But very few people [iop.org].

          For all glacier melt contribution thresholds that were evaluated, more than 90% of the at risk population lives in Asia. We find that no more than 8.9% of the global population lives in river basins that depend on seasonal glacier discharge for at least 5% of river discharge in the peak-melt month; no more than 5.4% rely on 10% of glacier discharge in the peak-melt month, no more than 2.1% rely on 25% and less than 1.8% rely on 50%.

          Less than 1.8% of the global population depends on glacier melt water for half of their water supply. That's it. At worst. Note that this paper is establishing an upper bound, with pessimistic estimates everywhere, on purpose. It is unlikely to be worse. It is likely it's not even as much as 1.8%.

          People will have to move out of the Indus River valley. Maybe. Assuming increased rainfall doesn't make up for the shortfall, which it very well might. That'

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by cusco ( 717999 )

            Lima, with 11 million people, Arequipa, with a million, and Santiago, with almost 6 million, depend on glacial melt water, as does every smaller city in the Atacama. (Santiago gets more rainfall than the others, but still nowhere near enough to survive on it.)

          • 1.8% is still a lot of people, and the effects are already being felt. There's a valid question about whether people losing their water are entitled to compensation from countries than contributed to the climactic conditions when many of those previous contributions may have been before it was reasonable, given the state of scientific knowledge, to change. And there is no simple answer here that will satisfy everyone.

    • Great. Now explain why the poles are warming faster.

        • Yeah the greenhouse effect. Thanks for the confirmation.

          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

            There's a wee bit more detail than that. You've made it pretty clear you're not actually interested, but maybe someone else is.

            You can demonstrate the effect for yourself easily enough. If you build a fire outside on a cold day you'll notice that the fire is very hot, but as you move away from it you end up getting cold quite quickly. There's a very steep temperature gradient. If you build the same fire in an insulated room the fire is still at pretty much the same temperature, but the temperature gradient

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by HiThere ( 15173 )

        It's observational evidence, so it doesn't really NEED explanations. If I actually thought you were interested though I might try, but I'd need to refresh on weather models. But those just explain the actual data, and even if they're wrong it doesn't alter the data.

  • Please, relax. The Sun is only turning into a Red Giant and if it doesn't swallow the Earth whole will it blow off it's surface and turn it into a boiling blubber of molten iron. It's a completely natural phenomenon and just happens sooner than expected. It's certainly no reason to panic and it happens to all the inner planets.

    • Sooner, later, in the end does it really matter?

      • Exactly. Why really care for ice ages for instance? Those take thousands of years. And global warming happens on a much shorter time scale. The big issue is still the Sun! So if people want to do something about it then they should try making the planet cooler, because it's going to get seriously hot when the Sun turns into a Red Giant.

    • Well, that will happen on a scale of about five billion years.

      I think we can not worry about that particular problem for the while. In the long long term, yes, we'll need to migrate outwards.

  • Earth is spinning faster [phys.org], sending ice away in the space! Lock your seat belts, if you do not want to be thrown away...
  • So now an article without any error margins is good enough to shut down the most important first world economic sector on the planet ? The ChiComs are certainly getting their ironically capitalist money's worth.
    • You need to distinguish between a science article written by a journalist who has removed the error bars and the scientific paper with them. Knock the journalist if you must, not the scientists. Also it just reports the issue with ice, not prescribe policy remedies - that's what politicians, political processes and diplomacy are for.

  • ....I mean, since we're actually just approaching the ice levels not seen since....1940. (yawn)

    Note the story is that its melting the fastest since the mid 1990s. That's practically weather, not climate.

    I know it's important to wave our hands in the air screaming like the world is ending but literally - these arctic ice volumes vary tremendously, and this has been as low within a normal human lifetime.

    I'm sure it's a coincidence that the nearly peak record arctic ice volumes were as recent as 1979?

    Publish

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by cusco ( 717999 )

      In the 1970s sulfur dioxide from burning coal was increasing the planet's albedo and masking the signal of the increased CO2. That's why it was a fairly cold decade. Now we scrub the SO2 to prevent acid rain, albedo is back to normal, and the climate is showing us what pumping all that CO2 into the atmosphere really does.

      Let me ask you, if you don't think that adding CO2 to the atmosphere Earth increases the amount of heat retained, why does it have exactly that effect on Venus, Mars and Titan? Is there

      • Of course CO2 does increase heat retained. That's (as far we understand it) physical reality.

        First, it's NOT having that effect on Titan. Check your facts. Hydrogen and Methane are the greenhouse gases on Titan. CO2 is not doing that. https://www.nasa.gov/home/hqne... [nasa.gov]

        CO2 is 95% of the Martian atmosphere.
        CO2 is 96% of the Venus atmosphere.
        To suggest that either of them is in any way comparable to Earth (where it's 4/100 of 1%) is ridiculous.

        And then of that 0.04%, that "titanic force of anthropically-ge

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by cusco ( 717999 )

          Past "historically sudden spikes" took centuries and millennia, not decades. We have ice cores going back 800,000 years (and less direct methods of measurement considerably further back), CO2 has not risen this fast in at least a million years. We're in unknown territory already.

          Of course there are feedback systems, but that doesn't auto-magically lead to stability.. They've led to a "snowball Earth" condition at least twice. Currently the increased air temperature is melting permafrost and warmer water

          • "CO2 has not risen this fast in at least a million years"
            Sure, it hasn't in the past week, either.
            Fortunately, we have a reasonable paleoclimate record going back more or less 500x as far in which there are (at least) 7 major impact events over that span that we know of: Woodleigh, Manicouagan, Morokweng, Kara, Chicxulub, Popigai, Chesapeake Bay.
            All of these show up in the climate record, to some degree, illustrating precisely what happens with sudden pulses of CO2, dust, etc. (Human industrialization has

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by cusco ( 717999 )

              Ah, so you want to misrepresent the data. I'm done with you.

              • There's another infamous ex president that whenever he was confronted by facts he found uncomfortable, he'd just shout "fake news".

                I get it, you idolize him.

      • Let me ask you, if you don't think that adding CO2 to the atmosphere Earth increases the amount of heat retained, why does it have exactly that effect on Venus, Mars and Titan? Is there some magical effect that make carbon dioxide on Earth deny the laws of physics?

        It's not "magic" that keeps Earth from turning into a hothouse like Venus. It's water. The more heat retained by CO2 the more heat is pumped out into space by the water cycle. A little bit of CO2 isn't going to change that.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by cusco ( 717999 )

          Pumped out into space? Water vapor is probably Earth's most important greenhouse gas, the most difficult one to model because there's so much of it and it's quantity varies dramatically depending on local temperature and as clouds it increases the albedo, but it still holds massive amounts of heat in the atmosphere. How does this magical pump work?

  • All we have to do is drop a giant ice cube into the ocean [youtube.com] to solve the problem once and for all.
  • for the last 10,000 years since the last glacial maximum.

    • the Earth has been losing ice ... for the last 10,000 years since the last glacial maximum.

      Well that just brings up questions-
      - you didn't include a link, so has it really?
      - if yes, have we looked at why? And do have some level of insight or understanding that could lead to predictions?
      - also if yes, how fast is it losing ice? Has the rate of loss changed in a geologically-on-a-dime timeframe (say, since the industrial revolution)? I mean, if I fill a large bucket with water and leave it in the sun

  • Studies """SUGGEST""" (Score:3)

    by Rick Schumann ( 4662797 ) on Monday January 25, 2021 @02:53PM (#60990110) Journal
    "..oh, well, science is all FAKE and LIES and LIBERAL CONSPIRACIES to steal MUH FREEDUMS, and scientists are all Satanists and want to sway the Faithful from Jesus with their lies about how the Earth is billions of years old and how we're """evolved""" (is that even a real word?) from MONKEYS, how ridiculous is that, what kind of FOOL do you have to be to believe lies like that? Also vaccination is making our kids autistic and the COVID19 vaccine will make us all sterile and obedient robots, don't take vaccines under any circumstances, trust in God's Plan the righteous will be protected by Gods' infinite power!!!11!!
    That's the sort of mentality we're fighting against these days: reject any sort of logic, reason, and actual FACTS, distrust all science and scientists (mainly because too many people are too stupid and/or undereducated to understand things even when explained like you'd explain to a child), and backslide into """believing""" in superstitious nonsense.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by sinij ( 911942 )

      distrust all science and scientists and backslide into """believing""" in superstitious nonsense.

      Well, good thing that you, Rick Schumann, are better than that. Oh wait. [slashdot.org]

      • Yes, yes, yes, because ONE SINGLE STUDY is what you should decide national policy upon, not a CONSENSUS. 'Scientific method'? LOL what's that!? 'Peer review', hilarious! Thankfully butthurt Trump supporters like you don't get to decide ANYTHING anymore.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by sinij ( 911942 )
          Welcome to science denialism, Rick Schumann. I linked multiple papers and can link more if you ever stop raging and start reading.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by k2dk ( 816114 )

      "..oh, well, science is all FAKE and LIES and LIBERAL CONSPIRACIES to steal MUH FREEDUMS, and scientists are all Satanists and want to sway the Faithful from Jesus with their lies about how the Earth is billions of years old and how we're """evolved""" (is that even a real word?) from MONKEYS, how ridiculous is that, what kind of FOOL do you have to be to believe lies like that? Also vaccination is making our kids autistic and the COVID19 vaccine will make us all sterile and obedient robots, don't take vaccines under any circumstances, trust in God's Plan the righteous will be protected by Gods' infinite power!!!11!!

      That's the sort of mentality we're fighting against these days: reject any sort of logic, reason, and actual FACTS, distrust all science and scientists (mainly because too many people are too stupid and/or undereducated to understand things even when explained like you'd explain to a child), and backslide into """believing""" in superstitious nonsense.

      This is one big strawman. How can this be upvoted? What is the purpose of that?

  • He'll have to have his martini neat.

  • I'm not really sure why crowded city coastlines should have the right to charge much less densely populated rural interiors for the urban sins of overbreeding. I live on a hill in Kentucky and I have 4 growing Giant Sequoias, with more on the way, and over my lifetime those trees will consume all the carbon that I could ever produce. So, why should I have to deal with an inconvenience to my lifestyle, when I live on a hill, am already carbon neutral. Seems to me, cities should think about nuclear power an

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