Recently, NASA has announced they
are about to launch their second study on glaciers and ice sheets effects on
sea level as they melt. This research plan by NASA is supposed to resolve the
differences in estimates on how fast glaciers are disappearing and contributing
to the rise in sea level. This study has found that glaciers outside of the
Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets have lost an average of 571 trillion pounds
of mass every year during the six-year study period from 2003 to 2009. As the
glaciers and ice sheets melt, the ocean level rises 0.03 inches a year. “The
study help precisely constrain how much these glaciers as a whole are
contributing to sea level rises,” said Alex Gardner, Earth scientist at Clark
University in Massachusetts. The two satellites that recorded and compared data
of ground measurements and led to the estimation of the loss of glaciers in all
regions of the planet were NASA’s Ice, Cloud, and Land Elevation Satellite
(ICESat) and Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE). Even though
ICESat stopped operating in 2009, NASA plans to schedule a launch for the
ICESat’s successor, ICESat-2 in 2016. Both this satellite and GRACE will
continue to operate in order to detect variations in Earth’s gravity field
resulting from changes in the planets mass distribution, including ice
displacements.
Most people believe that because
global glacier mass is small that it is something that doesn’t need to be
worried about. However, Tad Pfeffer, a glaciologist of the University of
Colorado, said, “But it’s like a little bucket with a huge hole in the bottom:
it may not last for very long, just a century or two, but while there’s ice in
those glaciers, it’s a major contributor to sea level rising”. Rising sea level
can contribute to an increased costal erosion, pollution, damage, flooding, disturbance
of organisms, and safety of humans. Although we will not be affected during our
own lifetime, those who will live after us will face many complications because
of the risen sea levels.
I found this article very
interesting because it had a combination of what we have been learning in class
and global warming, a topic that is discussed controversially by many people.
This article provided a lot of detailed and structured information about the
missions NASA has run in the past and those missions that are scheduled for the
future. However, I did have to do additional research on the long and short
term affects of a rising sea level. I felt this peace of information was
important to add so the people reading this could retain a full understanding
on how this topic is actually important. Life on Earth is at great risk all because
of melting glaciers and rising sea levels. Overall, I thought this article was
a good read and is great for students to research and find more information
about.