Glaciers Dominate Eustatic Sea-Level Rise in the 21st Century

Ice loss to the sea currently accounts for virtually all of the sea-level rise that is not attributable to ocean warming, and about 60% of the ice loss is from glaciers and ice caps rather than from the two ice sheets. The contribution of these smaller glaciers has accelerated over the past decade,...

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Published inScience (American Association for the Advancement of Science) Vol. 317; no. 5841; pp. 1064 - 1067
Main Authors Meier, Mark F, Dyurgerov, Mark B, Rick, Ursula K, O'Neel, Shad, Pfeffer, W. Tad, Anderson, Robert S, Anderson, Suzanne P, Glazovsky, Andrey F
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published United States American Association for the Advancement of Science 24.08.2007
The American Association for the Advancement of Science
Subjects
Climate
Climate models
Glacial retreat
Glaciers
Ice
Ice caps
Ice sheets
Mass
Mass balance
Melting
Meteorology
Ocean warming
Polar caps
Sea level
Sea level rise
Tidewater glaciers
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Summary:Ice loss to the sea currently accounts for virtually all of the sea-level rise that is not attributable to ocean warming, and about 60% of the ice loss is from glaciers and ice caps rather than from the two ice sheets. The contribution of these smaller glaciers has accelerated over the past decade, in part due to marked thinning and retreat of marine-terminating glaciers associated with a dynamic instability that is generally not considered in mass-balance and climate modeling. This acceleration of glacier melt may cause 0.1 to 0.25 meter of additional sea-level rise by 2100.
Bibliography:http://www.scienceonline.org/
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ISSN:0036-8075
1095-9203
1095-9203
DOI:10.1126/science.1143906