Glaciologists are discovering new ways surface meltwater alters the internal structure of ice sheets, and raising an alarm that sea level rise could be much more abrupt than current models forecast.
This is a tragedy in the making for the half a billion people who populate vulnerable coastal regions, since the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are effectively giant frozen freshwater reservoirs locking up in excess of 65 meters (over 200 feet) of equivalent global sea level rise. Since the 1990s their mass loss has been accelerating, becoming both the primary contributor to and the wild card in future sea level rise.
The eventual climate refugee crisis will be disastrous
The eventual climate refugee crisis will be disastrous
The way things are going, we’re not going to have to wait that long for it either.