On Wed, 7 Feb 2007, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > If sea level rise is the major concern, and the big uncertainty is ice > sheet dynamics, I wonder why so little seems to be getting done to > resolve the uncertainty. Presumably, there's value in knowing whether
Give us more money! > sea level will rise by 5 m in 50 years starting in 2030, or whether > it'll only rise by 40 cm by 2100? Why isn't more research focused on > ice sheet dynamics, if we believe (do we?) that they are the key > uncertainty for sea level rise, and that sea level rise is the key > danger? Or, more seriously, yes people are working on the ice dynamics. You could probably make a case for the idea that SLR from thermal expansion is boring and bound to be fairly small, although not negligible. By contrast, SLR from ice sheets is far less well determined. It could be tiny (or even negative) but potentially might be much bigger than the thermal exp component. > And, a phrase like "ice sheet dynamics are poorly understood" does not > communicate to me whether Greenland's ice sheet could literally slide > into the sea within a few hours, once some tipping point is reached, > or whether the disintegration must at the very least take decades. If > it's the latter, why exactly? People seem to have shifted their ideas a bit on what holds ice streams back; and the chances of them moving faster seem to have increased. But (having talked at cross-purposes with glacios a few times) they don't seem to be able to give useful timescales. -W. William M Connolley | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/met/wmc/ Climate Modeller, British Antarctic Survey | (01223) 221479 -- This message (and any attachments) is for the recipient only. NERC is subject to the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and the contents of this email and any reply you make may be disclosed by NERC unless it is exempt from release under the Act. Any material supplied to NERC may be stored in an electronic records management system. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Global Change ("globalchange") newsgroup. Global Change is a public, moderated venue for discussion of science, technology, economics and policy dimensions of global environmental change. Posts will be admitted to the list if and only if any moderator finds the submission to be constructive and/or interesting, on topic, and not gratuitously rude. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/globalchange -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
