Worry But Don't Panic Over Glacial Losses

摘要

With glaciers suddenly galloping to the sea in Greenland and the "weak underbelly" of Antarctic ice beginning to give way, it's hard to keep a cool head, but a couple of glaciologists at the meeting gave it a try. At least in the short term, they said, the situation, while bad, is not always quite as bad as it looks. Glaciologist Ian Joughin of the University of Washington, Seattle, reported on his and his colleagues' study of the forces acting on the Jakobshavn Glacier of southern Greenland. Jakobshavn accelerated toward the sea early in the decade after warming ocean water destroyed part of its floating ice tongue that had been helping to restrain it.