Like so much of climate science, the latest insight from the frozen world of Greenland offers one of those good news/bad news outlooks for the future of the world’s oceanfront real estate.
A decade-long, eye-in-the-sky study of nearly 200 major outlet glaciers found that they haven’t been tumbling into the ocean with the dramatic acceleration once feared — and that means these colossal rivers of ice might not contribute as much to a catastrophic sea-level rise as predicted by some worst-case scenarios.
Some climate studies had suggested that Greenland’s coastal glaciers were poised to produce enough fresh water to raise the global sea level by 2.5 to 6.5 feet over the next 90 years.
But their tidewater meltdown — if it doesn’t speed up beyond the rates seen during the past 10 years — will likely deliver a sea level boost measured in inches rather than feet, according to a new study published this week in the journal of Science.