UT Study - Greenland Losing Equivalent Of Lake Houston Every Six Hours

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Greenland's massive ice sheet is melting rapidly, losing the equivalent of Lake Houston every six hours. That's the conclusion of a study by University of Texas at Austin scientists that appears to confirm earlier, controversial research that suggests the melting of Greenland's ice has nearly tripled since the late 1990s. Greenland's ice sheet contains about 10 percent of the world's fresh water. The findings concern climate scientists, who say that since the Industrial Revolution, and especially since the mid-1900s, carbon dioxide levels have risen by more than 40 percent. They attribute much of the increase to fossil fuel burning and say that, in the absence of increased carbon emissions, no natural factor can explain warming global temperatures.

The warming effect, scientists fear, is accelerating and could lead to rising sea levels. "This is a good indication of global warming, that it's there," said the study's lead author, Jianli Chen, a researcher at UT's Center for Space Research. "At least, it's happening in the Arctic." Using two satellites that measured the change in the mass of Greenland's ice sheet, the researchers, publishing last week in the journal Science, found that Greenland was losing 57 cubic miles of ice a year.

At that rate, Greenland is raising sea levels by less than a half-inch per decade. But still more rapid ice loss could accelerate that rate. If all of Greenland's ice were to melt, seas would rise by 21 feet. "Existing ice sheet models estimate that most of the ice sheet will be removed within 1,000 years," said Eric Rignot of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., lead author of the Greenland ice study earlier this year that the new work seems to confirm.

"This is a very conservative estimate, and the time scale is at least three times too large. Whether it will happen in the next century, we do not know. But, realistically, every year we look at Greenland, we realize that things are changing faster than we thought."

Ed. - emphasis added

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http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/4117181.html