It hasn’t been a month since we told you about a Manhattan-sized ice chunk departing from the Greenlandic glacier for good. While we lamented over the irreparable loss at that juncture, now it’s time to take heart from findings of a joint US/Dutch team from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Delft University, which states that ‘Greenland and West Antarctic ice caps are melting at half the speed previously predicted’, and sea levels haven’t gone that high as well.
Researchers’ findings are in stark contrast to previous estimates that predicted an average rise of around 0.75 mm a year in global sea levels. Moreover, it was predicted that the Greenland ice cap and West Antarctica were melting at a rate of 230 and 132 gigatons a year respectively. Since the glacial isostatic adjustment was not done, the estimates proved wrong. Now, the corrected data collected from the GRACE satellites, GPS measurements on land and sea floor pressure measurements reveals the Greenlandic sea floor is sinking more than it did ever before.
Via: DailyMail