Science is for Sharing

Greenland is an immense, glittering expanse of snow and ice. But in recent summers, satellites have been observing less “glitter” from the Northern Hemisphere’s largest ice expanse due to surface melt and other changes caused by warmer temperatures. The summer of 2012 found Greenland darker than it has been since ice-sheet-wide observations began in 2000. The darkest areas occurred around the perimeter of the island—the lowest elevations, where melting is most significant—but virtually the entire ice sheet showed below-average reflectivity. Courtesy: Climate Watch Magazine by NOAA http://www.climatewatch.noaa.gov/article/2012/less-glitter-greenland-ice-sheet-continued-to-darken-in-summer-2012 Map by NOAA Climate.gov team, based on NASA MODIS albedo data provided by Jason Box, The Ohio State University. Inset image is from NASA’s Terra satellite, courtesy the  LANCE MODIS Rapid Response Project.  Reviewed by Jason Box.

Global warming caused by greenhouse gases delays natural patterns of glaciation suggests a study co-authored by a University of Florida researcher and published online Jan. 8 in Nature Geoscience. The Earth's current warm period that began about 11,000 years ago should give way to another ice age within about 1,500 years, according to accepted astronomical models. However, current levels of carbon dioxide are trapping too much heat in the atmosphere to allow the Earth to cool as it has in its prehistoric past in response to changes in Earth's orbital pattern. data indicate that the next ice age will likely be delayed by tens of thousands of years. Good news ...?                 NO! Ice sheets like those in western Antarctica are already destabilized by global warming, they eventually slough off and become a part of the ocean's volume, it will have a dramatic effect on sea level. Read more here :  http://www.physorg.com/news/...

A new Project Aims to Predict South Asian Floods Are our Glaciers melting .... faster ....??? How it affects the nearby lakes and rivers flow and will it cause floods...? A new effort, dubbed HIMLA and led by Molly Brown of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, aims to change this by harnessing state-of-the-art, satellite-based monitoring and modeling techniques. Scientists will feed data from satellite instruments such as MODIS and ASTER into a hydrological model that will produce daily snow/water equivalence maps that will feed into other hydrological models to determine how much freshwater flows into the region’s rivers from snow and glaciers.  The ultimate goal: an early warning system for flood prediction.... Read more from NASA's blog:  http://blogs.nasa.gov/cm/blog/whatonearth/posts/post_1323195383980.html