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161 comments on Greenland, or why you might care about ice physics

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Stuart Staniford on December 12, 2005 - 4:31am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
The 215km^3 is net loss of ice (roughly, net loss = melting + icebergs - snowfall). If the climate were perfectly stable and the ice sheet in equilibrium with it, this number would be zero.

On the satellites. These results come from Synthetic Aperture Radar (more here) which has not been around that long.

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tommy on December 12, 2005 - 6:34am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
True, I was just thinking that 215 km3 is just a small fraction. However I just did this math:

Sea surface area earth: 361,126,221 km2 (source)
Lost of ice on greenland: 215 km3
Average rice in sealevel: 0,69 mm (divide the two)

Synthetic Aperture Radar has been used on a european satellite since 1991: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Remote-Sensing_Satellite

That would possibly give one more data point, stil not enough to extrapolate the curve.

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slx on January 29, 2007 - 1:11pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Water expands when freezing, did you take that into account?

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161 comments on Greenland, or why you might care about ice physics

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