Greenland and Antarctica, Melting

by Emily Gertz · 2009-03-07 17:46:00 UTC
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Latest: Greenland And Antarctic Ice Sheet Melting, Rate Unknown, Science Daily, Feb. 25, 2009

Greenland, Antarctica Glaciers Speeding Faster Toward the Sea">Greenland, Antarctica Glaciers Speeding Faster Toward the Sea, Bloomberg News, Feb. 26, 2009

Polar regions found warming fast, raising sea levels, Reuters, Feb. 25, 2009

Image above, from NASA Earth Observatory:

The Greenland ice sheet experienced record melting in September 2002, as did much of the Arctic. A comparison of images from 2001 through 2003 and 2004shows the changes in Greenland’s ice sheet over the past few years.

In this image, the melt zone appears along the western edge of the ice. In this zone, water has saturated the ice, darkening its color from white to blue-gray. The colored lines indicate the approximate melt zone extents for June 2001 through June 2005. Between June 2001 and June 2003, the melt zone increased substantially, then shrank somewhat in June 2004. The melt zone for June 2005 appears roughly equivalent to that of June 2002, the same year that later set a record in Greenland Ice Sheet melting. These images show the Greenland Ice Sheet midway through the seasonal melt. Summer melting generally extends from the spring through the early fall.

Emily Gertz
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