[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > If Greenland were to melt rapidly (2 m per century of sea level rise), > what would be the impact of all the cold melt water?
Less north atlantic overturning, colder western europe (though this probably merely means less warming than otherwise, rather than colder in absolute terms). > > Have there been attempts to model world climate on the assumption of > rapid ice discharge into the North Atlantic? Yes, it's a fairly standard experiment, often referred to as "hosing" because in practical terms all the modeller does is turn on a big imaginary hose that dumps fresh water into the north atlantic. Often these are in the context of paleoclimate studies, but people have done it for the future too. Of course the size of the hose affects the results... Here's one example where they try to model the ice melt in a slightly more sophisticated manner: http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2006/2006GL025765.shtml > > I've tried to get a first back of the envelope impression by > calculating the heat required to melt all of Greenland, and come to 1 > W/m2 over 50 years, but that's not really that helpful. No, the important impacts (other than sea level rise) are due to freshwater effects on the buoyancy and therefore circulation. The ice melting and coldness of the meltwater itself are unimportant. James --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ 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 -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
