More bad climate news, clouds melting Greenland faster than thought

More bad climate news has been published in the journal Nature Communications. New research indicates that clouds are accelerating ice loss from Greenland because they insulate the air above the icy landmass. The added warmth is contributing an additional 61 billion tons of water annually to the sea.

LOS ANGELES, CA (California Network) - According to a new paper in Nature Communications, clouds are accelerating global warming, particularly in sensitive Greenland. A warming planet is projected to be cloudier, but this has the effect of insulating the Earth. Although clouds block sunlight and bring snow, they insulate better than they shade, causing temperatures at the surface underneath them to be warmer than on a cloudless day.

In other words, sunny days are better for the Greenland ice shelf than cloudy ones.

The added heat, plugs a gap in climate models which have not factored in the effect of clouds on the ice sheets. The net effect is an additional 61 billion tons (56 billion metric tonnes) of water being dumped into the sea each year.

This water contributes to sea level rise. It also has an impact on the circulation of heat from the tropics to the North Atlantic. Scientists have long been worried that a natural undersea current, which conveys heat from the tropics to the North Sea, could be choked by the massive quantities of freshwater being dumped into the North Atlantic. Saltwater does a better job of transmitting heat than freshwater.

If the current shuts down, or is substantially diminished, it would restrict the natural transfer of heat from the tropics to the North Sea, which would cause Ireland, England and parts of Northern Europe to freeze wholly.

Over the next century, sea level rise is expected to become among the greatest threats to existing civilization. Billions of people live adjacent to the ocean and many of those people are vulnerable to sea level rise. Powerful storms or unexpected events could lead to many more fatalities than expected. Small islands, particularly in the South Pacific may become entirely submerged, forcing their entire population to relocate.

The data for the study was acquired by the Geological Survey of Greenland and was combined with satellite data from 2007-2010. The study was chiefly authored by Kristof Van Tricht from the University of Leuven, Belgium.