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<DIV class=pad><FONT size=+2><B>Glacier Melt Could Signal Faster Rise in Ocean
Levels</B></FONT><BR></DIV></DIV>
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<P><FONT size=-1>By Shankar Vedantam<BR>Washington Post Staff Writer<BR>Friday,
February 17, 2006; A01<BR></FONT></P>
<P></P>
<P>Greenland's glaciers are melting into the sea twice as fast as previously
believed, the result of a warming trend that renders obsolete predictions of how
quickly Earth's oceans will rise over the next century, scientists said
yesterday.</P>
<P>The new data come from satellite imagery and give fresh urgency to worries
about the role of human activity in global warming. The Greenland data are
mirrored by findings from Bolivia to the Himalayas, scientists said, noting that
rising sea levels threaten widespread flooding and severe storm damage in
low-lying areas worldwide.</P>
<P>The scientists said they do not yet understand the precise mechanism causing
glaciers to flow and melt more rapidly, but they said the changes in Greenland
were unambiguous -- and accelerating: In 1996, the amount of water produced by
melting ice in Greenland was about 90 times the amount consumed by Los Angeles
in a year. Last year, the melted ice amounted to 225 times the volume of water
that city uses annually.</P>
<P>"We are witnessing enormous changes, and it will take some time before we
understand how it happened, although it is clearly a result of warming around
the glaciers," said Eric Rignot, a scientist at the California Institute of
Technology's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.</P>
<P>The Greenland study is the latest of several in recent months that have found
evidence that rising temperatures are affecting not only Earth's ice sheets but
also such things as plant and animal habitats, coral reefs' health, hurricane
severity, droughts, and globe-girdling currents that drive regional
climates.</P>
<P>The ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica are among the largest reservoirs
of fresh water on Earth, and their fate is expected to be a major factor in
determining how much the oceans will rise. Rignot and University of Kansas
scientist Pannir Kanagaratnam, who published their findings yesterday in the
journal Science, declined to guess how much the faster melting would raise sea
levels but said current estimates of around 20 inches over the next century are
probably too low.</P>
<P>While sea-level increases of a few feet may not sound like very much, they
could have profound consequences on flood-prone countries such as Bangladesh and
trigger severe weather around the world.</P>
<P>"The implications are global," said Julian Dowdeswell, a glacier expert at
the University of Cambridge in England who reviewed the new paper for Science.
"We are not talking about walking along the sea front on a nice summer day, we
are talking of the worst storm settings, the biggest storm surges . . . you are
upping the probability major storms will take place."</P>
<P>The study also highlights how seemingly small changes in temperature can have
extensive effects. Where glaciers in Greenland were once traveling around four
miles per year, they are now moving twice as fast. While it is possible that
increased precipitation in northern Greenland is somehow compensating for the
melting in the south, the scientists said that is unlikely.</P>
<P>There are multiple ways warming might be causing glaciers to accelerate. The
scientists said increased temperatures may loosen the grip that glaciers have on
underlying bedrock, or melt away floating shelves along the shore that can hold
ice in place.</P>
<P>Whatever the mechanism, the phenomenon seems widespread. At a news conference
organized by the American Association for the Advancement of Science at its
annual meeting in St. Louis, glacier scientists Vladimir Aizen from the
University of Idaho and Gino Casassa of Chile's Centro de Estudios Cientificos
said they were seeing the same thing happen to glaciers in the Himalayas and
South America.</P>
<P>"Glaciers have retreated systematically and in an accelerated fashion in the
last few decades," Casassa said. One glacier that provided Bolivia with its only
ski slope five years ago has splintered into three and cannot be used for
skiing, the scientist added.</P>
<P>Rapid melting of Himalayan glaciers also raises concerns for the large
portion of humankind that gets its fresh water from glacier-fed rivers in South
Asia, Aizen noted.</P>
<P>Most climate scientists believe a major cause for Earth's warming climate is
increased emissions of greenhouse gases as a result of burning fossil fuels,
largely in the United States and other wealthy, industrialized nations such as
those of western Europe but increasingly in rapidly developing nations such as
China and India as well. Carbon dioxide and several other gases trap the sun's
heat and raise atmospheric temperature.</P>
<P>"This study underscores the need to take swift, meaningful actions at home
and abroad to address climate change," said Vicki Arroyo, director of policy
analysis at the Pew Center on Global Climate Change.</P>
<P>The data highlight the lack of meaningful U.S. policy, she added: "This is
the kind of study that should make people stay awake at night wondering what
we're doing to the climate, how we're shaping the planet for future generations
and, especially, what we can do about it."</P></DIV></FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>