Science and the Greenland Ice Cap



I'm reading a book called When the Ice is Gone. It is about the ice cores drilled with primitive equipment in the l950's. Even today, it is dangerous and difficult to get to that spot. Getting equipment, fuel, housing and food to workers bordered on the impossible. Piece by piece the cores, maybe 4 inches in diameter, were exacted over a few years and shipped frozen to be stored and studies. The military did this as part of the cold war against Russia. The thinking was that fighter jets and other weapons based in Greenland could intercept Russian aircraft headed to the U.S. 

The ice cores ended up in Colorado for several decades. After a while, scientists in the U.S. lost interest in the ice cores and they were almost thrown away. By a fluke of history, they were shipped back closer to where they came from, Denmark. By around 2020 many new scientists were working on global warming and the ice core came back to being very valuable. 

When earth was finally reached after some years of drilling the ice core, plant material was found. This means that thousands of years ago, before carbon from automobiles and trucks, the climate warmed and all the polar ice melted. It has happened twice, the last time about 430,000 years ago. Today's technology allows science to measure the speed of the melt and it is much faster than the two previous melts. 

It will take a generation to melt the entire Greenland glacier. Snow on it and on one in Antartica still grow a bit higher each year in the center as they get smaller horizontally. As the melt occurs there is more moisture in the nearby atmosphere making lots of snow. As warming continues this evaporation will turn to rain and the last snow will melt.

With melting in both Greenland and Antartica the amount of water will raise oceans several feet. But then, the warmer weather will cause the water to expand raising the sea level even further. The sea level rise when the two are added together is about 20 feet. Several huge mega cities in Asia and the Middle East are worse off than U.S. cities. Many millions will be relocated. 


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