Greenland Melt May Swamp LA, Other

Cities, Study Says

Stefan Lov gren
for National Geographic News
April 8, 2004
Greenl and's massive ice sheet could begin to melt this centu ry and may disappear completely within Ute
nex t thousand yea rs if global war mi ng continues at its presen t rate.
According to a new climate change study. th e mclting of Greenland's ice sheet would ra ise th e oceans by
seven me ters (23 feet), threMen in g to submerg'e citIes located at sea level, like London, Ne w York and Los
Angeles,
.
Even a parti al melting of th e ice sheet could have catastrophic consequences for low~ l y in g countries like

Bangladesh and the Maldives.

"A one-meter [Utree-footl sea level rise would submerge a substantial amount of Bangladesh," Jonathan
Gregory, Ute study's lead author and a climate scientist at the Uni versity of Readin g in England, said in a
telephone interview.

Scientists calculated that if the annual average temperature in Greenland increases by almost 3 Celsius
(S.4 Fahrenheit), il' ice sheet will begin to melt.

Many experts believe Ule concentration of carbon diOXIde in the atmosphere will have reached levels
aro und the year 21 00 that would cause the temperature to rise that much.
Global Wa r ming
The issue of global warming is controversial. Il'S clear that, si nce the Industrial Revoluti on, carbon diox ide

in the atmosphere has increased 30 percent, increasing the heat-trapping capability of the atmosphere.
Scientists genera lly believe Utat the use of fossil fuels (coal, oil and natural gas) to run cars, heat homes,
and power fac tories is the primary source for this increase in carbon dioxide levels.

Meanwhile, the EarUI 'S temperatu re already increased 0.6 Celsius (1.8 Fahrenheit) in the las t cenw ry.
Oceans have also become warmer. This has caused sea levels to rise 4 to 8 inches ( 10 to 20 centimeters) in
Ute last hundred yea rs.
0

Different Scenarios

At the present temperatures, about half of the snow Utat fa lls on Greenland melts and runs off as wa ter, The
rest of it stays and becomes ice to eventually fo rm icebergs.
UThe warmer it gets, the more melting there is," Gregory said. "You would also expec t morc precipitation,

but mos t studies suggest that lhe increase in melling wo uld be bigger. The icc sheet wi ll just get smaller
and smaller."

In the IIlust extreme scenario, the study predicts temperaWres to rise by 80 Cclsiusil 8 Fahrenheit) by the
year 2050. This, in turn, would raise sea levels by 7 meters (23 fee t) in a thousand years.

"ll is within the range of scenarios that people have considered," Gregory said. "It's not a completely
outrageous number.1I

Sinking Cities
If ri sing temperatures were to cause me lting of Greenland's ice sheet, the process wou ld be gradual. There's
no evidence that the ice sheet would ca tastrophically disintegrare. Even th e worst scenario is unlikely to
aher tl,e world map.
"If you were to raise the sea levels by seven meters [23 feet] and look at a map of the world , yo u probably
wou ldn't think it was startlingly [different] ," Gregory said. "But o f course many of the places where a lot of
people live are close to sea level. "
Many cities and communitics along the U.S. Eastern Seaboard are at least partly below thi s level.
"Sea level ri se has the potenti al to affect millions of people liv ing in low-lying coastal regions, particularly
the residents of megacities (like New York, Tokyo, Londo n) and those li ving on deltas of major rivers and
small island nations," Church said.
Gregory and other scientists warn that even if th e composilion of the atmosphere could be reversed to preindustri al conditions, the sea level rise could be irreversible. Once it's gone, th e Greenland ice sheet is
unlikely to be reestablished.
"S ea level represents one of the longer time scale responses found in the climate system," said Ronald J.
Stouffer at tl,e U.S. Na liona l Oceanic and Almos pheric Administration's Geophys ical Fluid Dyna mics
Laboratory in Prin ceton, New Jersey.
~

"It may not be possible to stop or reverse UJis process once it has been. underway fo r a period of time, even
UlOugh the climate returns to a relatively cool stale," Srouffer said.

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