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Greenland can't go green
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Comment
Greenland can’t go green The Arctic is melting fast. The world needs to wake up to just how fast, and what the impacts will be, says Adam Vaughan Adam is New Scientist’s chief reporter. Follow him on Twitter @adamvaughan_uk
JOSIE FORD
I
T’S not exactly a natural icebreaker, but Earth scientists are talking a lot about ice right now. I met quite a few of them at the European Geosciences Union general assembly in Vienna, Austria. One particularly eye-opening moment came when Harry Zekollari from Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands showed me how his computer models indicate that half of Alpine glaciers are doomed by midcentury, whatever action we now take to curb carbon emissions. If anything, the models seem a conservative representation of facts on the ground. A few days later, NASA was highlighting
satellite imagery of an Arctic glacier slipping at a rate that was “simply nuts”, according to one researcher involved: 20 metres a day, compared with 20 metres a year in 2013. And we have recently learned how increased rainfall in Greenland is melting way more ice than anyone expected. If Greenland starts to go green, we have a real problem. The ice cap there is up to 3 kilometres deep and contains enough water to raise sea levels by several metres. It is looking increasingly vulnerable. A study just out in the journal PNAS has looked at almost half a century of data to conclude that Greenland’s annual ice mass loss has grown nearly sixfold in
30 years. This year’s melt season has already begun, a month early. So much bad news begins to wash over you – and that’s exactly the researchers’ main worry. Eric Rignot, an author of the PNAS paper, says what surprises him the most is how much science people need before contemplating action. If Alpine glaciers disappear, that’s a blow to the region’s tourism and hydroelectric industries. But perhaps we can tolerate the loss of skiing holidays. Perhaps we should anyway. Greenland is in a different league: an unfolding environmental problem with incalculable, global economic risk attached. It is – still, just – not too late
to act. Debate is ongoing about when we will reach climate tipping points where feedback processes kick in to accelerate melting, potentially wiping out Greenland’s ice sheet. But the dynamics of ice mean melting doesn’t increase linearly as the world warms. We also know there was a significant Greenland ice sheet 130,000 years ago, when summer temperatures were several degrees warmer. So every fraction of a degree of warming avoided helps avert the worst. Some researchers are already reviving talk of geoengineering our way from catastrophe. Injecting cooling sulphates into the atmosphere could reduce Greenland’s ice loss by 10 per cent by 2070, according to modelling by a team at Beijing Normal University, also presented in Vienna. But even if that is technically feasible, the uncertain global impacts make it a political no-go. Countries at a recent UN meeting even rejected a proposal for a simple assessment into climate-cooling technologies. The answer isn’t sexy: deep, rapid cuts in fossil fuel use. This past week, I have been talking to instigators of the Extinction Rebellion movement (see page 12). The detail of their demands might be unrealistic, but they have created resonance. The climate certainly has tipping points. Can societies have them too? ❚ 4 May 2019 | New Scientist | 23
Letters Is a lack of free will behind readers’ correspondence? p26
Aperture A white-tailed eagle snatches a fish from a Scottish loch p28
Culture Magic relies on brain trickery, as a book and show reveal p30
Culture columnist Video games can bring history to life, says Jacob Aron p32
Comment
Greenland can’t go green The Arctic is melting fast. The world needs to wake up to just how fast, and what the impacts will be, says Adam Vaughan Adam is New Scientist’s chief reporter. Follow him on Twitter @adamvaughan_uk
JOSIE FORD
I
T’S not exactly a natural icebreaker, but Earth scientists are talking a lot about ice right now. I met quite a few of them at the European Geosciences Union general assembly in Vienna, Austria. One particularly eye-opening moment came when Harry Zekollari from Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands showed me how his computer models indicate that half of Alpine glaciers are doomed by midcentury, whatever action we now take to curb carbon emissions. If anything, the models seem a conservative representation of facts on the ground. A few days later, NASA was highlighting
satellite imagery of an Arctic glacier slipping at a rate that was “simply nuts”, according to one researcher involved: 20 metres a day, compared with 20 metres a year in 2013. And we have recently learned how increased rainfall in Greenland is melting way more ice than anyone expected. If Greenland starts to go green, we have a real problem. The ice cap there is up to 3 kilometres deep and contains enough water to raise sea levels by several metres. It is looking increasingly vulnerable. A study just out in the journal PNAS has looked at almost half a century of data to conclude that Greenland’s annual ice mass loss has grown nearly sixfold in
30 years. This year’s melt season has already begun, a month early. So much bad news begins to wash over you – and that’s exactly the researchers’ main worry. Eric Rignot, an author of the PNAS paper, says what surprises him the most is how much science people need before contemplating action. If Alpine glaciers disappear, that’s a blow to the region’s tourism and hydroelectric industries. But perhaps we can tolerate the loss of skiing holidays. Perhaps we should anyway. Greenland is in a different league: an unfolding environmental problem with incalculable, global economic risk attached. It is – still, just – not too late
to act. Debate is ongoing about when we will reach climate tipping points where feedback processes kick in to accelerate melting, potentially wiping out Greenland’s ice sheet. But the dynamics of ice mean melting doesn’t increase linearly as the world warms. We also know there was a significant Greenland ice sheet 130,000 years ago, when summer temperatures were several degrees warmer. So every fraction of a degree of warming avoided helps avert the worst. Some researchers are already reviving talk of geoengineering our way from catastrophe. Injecting cooling sulphates into the atmosphere could reduce Greenland’s ice loss by 10 per cent by 2070, according to modelling by a team at Beijing Normal University, also presented in Vienna. But even if that is technically feasible, the uncertain global impacts make it a political no-go. Countries at a recent UN meeting even rejected a proposal for a simple assessment into climate-cooling technologies. The answer isn’t sexy: deep, rapid cuts in fossil fuel use. This past week, I have been talking to instigators of the Extinction Rebellion movement (see page 12). The detail of their demands might be unrealistic, but they have created resonance. The climate certainly has tipping points. Can societies have them too? ❚ 4 May 2019 | New Scientist | 23