Greenland Meltdown Set To Permanently Flood Florida
By rickyjames, Section News Posted on Wed Apr 07, 2004 at 07:37:57 AM PST
There's going to be a lot of new swampland to sell in Florida over the next few centuries if Jonathan Gregory and colleagues from the University of Reading are right. Their new computer model calculates that Earth may have already crossed a critical threshhold in global warming which is too late to alter. They predict an 8 degree Centigrade rise by 2350 in the average temperature of the Greenland ice cap. A 3 degree C rise is estimated to be enough to melt the entire Greenland ice cap and raise the average worldwide sea level by 7 meters or almost 25 feet. The coastal infrastructure of Florida and other low-lying areas worldwide are thus doomed.
This scenario was avoided in only one of 35 runs of the Gregory computer model. Greenland has the world's second largest ice cap, formed during the last ice age. It is 3000 metres high and contains 2.85 million cubic kilometres of ice.
Once gone, the Greenland ice cap may not reform for eons. "Unlike the ice on the Arctic Ocean, much of which melts and reforms each year, the Greenland ice sheet might not re-grow even if the global climate were returned to pre-industrial conditions," Gregory says.
His calculations are to be published in the science journal Nature. The amount of carbon dioxide in the air is a crucial parameter. "We found that the levels of CO2 which we could quite likely reach during this century are sufficient to produce that amount of warming," he said. "Presuming the calculations are right, that it is going to happen, and that we are in the right ballpark, then you would prevent it (the meltdown) happening by not allowing CO2 to go above the levels we were considering," Gregory said.
The lowest CO2 concentration scenario used in the models was 450 parts per million. Current levels are below that, according to Gregory, but by the middle of this century are likely to exceed it.
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