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Chris Mooney
@
chriscmooney
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Energy and environment writer at @washingtonpost, also tweeting at @postgreen. Views are my own.
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Chris Mooney
@chriscmooney
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Scientists at USGS face new scrutiny on research presentations wapo.st/2t7GTbS?tid=ss…
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Chris Mooney
@chriscmooney
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19. Nevertheless, the changes that have already happened are more than enough to make you stop and take notice. /end pic.twitter.com/kID7Jxkmfd
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Chris Mooney
@chriscmooney
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18. It all underscores that right now, we are seeing a tripling in Antarctica and simply wondering if it is the beginning of something a lot bigger. We can’t say for sure that it is, or that the current rate of change will continue.
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Chris Mooney
@chriscmooney
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17. The next thing to watch for, really, would be if Antarctica starts living up to that potential and surpasses the annual losses from Greenland.
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Chris Mooney
@chriscmooney
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16. Greenland is melting faster right now because it is being subjected to rapid Arctic warming. But everybody knows that Antarctica has vastly more *potential* to lose ice than Greenland does.
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Chris Mooney
@chriscmooney
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15. Another thing I didn't get to in the story, but wanted to mention as key context -- at 219 billion tons per year of losses, Antarctica is still actually lagging Greenland. Greenland is at 286. sealevel.nasa.gov
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Chris Mooney
@chriscmooney
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14. Granted, there were far bigger ice sheets in the Northern hemisphere at that time than there are today. It's not an exact comparison.
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Chris Mooney
@chriscmooney
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13.At the end of the last ice age, for instance -- and as I reported in a recent story -- it is believed that seas rose at a rate of “tens of millimeters annually.” washingtonpost.com/news/energy-en…
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Chris Mooney
@chriscmooney
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12. There are also cases of past planetary deglaciation events where we know seas rose considerably faster than they’re rising now.
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Chris Mooney
@chriscmooney
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11. After all, one key finding of the current assessment is that losses in East Antarctica – the biggest area, containing the most ice by far – are minimal at this point. For now.
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Chris Mooney
@chriscmooney
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10.But many scientists are indeed saying that Antarctica has the potential to lose a lot more ice than it is losing now.
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Chris Mooney
@chriscmooney
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9. Let me underscore again – nobody is saying losses will continue to increase at this very fast rate.
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Chris Mooney
@chriscmooney
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8. From current loss levels, another tripling would mean 657 billion tons per year, or close to 2 millimeters per year of sea level rise; another tripling on top of that would mean 1,971 billion tons per year, or over half a centimeter per year. And so on.
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Chris Mooney
@chriscmooney
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7. But just imagining what would happen if it did helps to underscore why scientists are watching Antarctica so closely -- and view it as the real wild card, and the one place that could make a big difference to sea levels in this century.
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Chris Mooney
@chriscmooney
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6. There is certainly no guarantee that the tripling -- from just 73 billion tons per year 10 years ago -- will continue.
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Chris Mooney
@chriscmooney
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5. So based on that, with 219 billion tons a year, you’re looking at a little over half a millimeter per year of sea level rise right now. That's from Antarctica only; globally there’s much more than that.
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Chris Mooney
@chriscmooney
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4. Key fact you need to know before we go any farther -- it takes about 360 billion tons of ice to produce a millimeter of sea level rise.
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Chris Mooney
@chriscmooney
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3. The study itself is here and the data on how the rate of ice loss has increased, over 5 year periods, is in table 1.
nature.com/articles/s4158…
nature.com/articles/s4158…
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Chris Mooney
@chriscmooney
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2. As I reported yesterday, a major scientific assessment has confirmed that the continent is now losing 219 billion tons of ice per year from 2012-2017, and that is three times the ice loss for the period 2002-2007, or 10 years ago.
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Chris Mooney
@chriscmooney
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1. So in light of the really big news yesterday about Antarctic ice loss *tripling* in a decade, I wanted to further unpack what this means and why it is so significant. washingtonpost.com/news/energy-en… pic.twitter.com/5veQVU3L7W
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