Salient to Investors:
Leaked UN documents show ice in Antarctica and Greenland is disappearing faster and may drive sea levels higher than predicted this century.
Greenland’s ice added 6 times more to sea levels in the decade through 2011 than in the previous 10 years, while Antarctica had a 5-fold increase.
Walt Meier at NASA said changes in the earth’s coldest areas are a very good indicator of a warming planet and serve as an early warning system. Meier said two degrees of warming in the UK or US would not be too noticeable, but in an area of snow and ice, it can have a huge effect – minus 1 to plus 1 is the difference between skating on the ice and swimming in the ocean.
Greenland and Antarctica contain enough ice to raise global sea levels by 217 feet, a process that would take thousands of years.
Greenland may add a total of 4 centimeters to 21 centimeters to ocean levels by the period 2081 through 2100, across a range of carbon-emissions scenarios versus the period 1986 through 2005.
David Vaughan at the British Antarctic Survey said the cryosphere is clearly one of the natural indicators of decadal climate change in the planet, and the changes are very visible.
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