B5
THE ASTORIAN • SATURDAY, AUGUST 17, 2019
NASA scientists fl y over Greenland to track melting ice
By SETH BORENSTEIN
Associated Press
he fi elds of rippling
ice 500 feet below
the NASA plane
give way to the blue-green
of water dotted with irreg-
ular chunks of bleached-
white ice, some the size of
battleships, some as tall as
15-story buildings.
Like nearly every other
glacier on Greenland, the
massive Kangerlussuaq is
melting. In fact, the giant
frozen island has seen
one of its biggest melts on
record this year. NASA sci-
entist Josh Willis is now
closely studying the phe-
nomenon in hopes of fi gur-
ing out precisely how global
warming is eating away at
Greenland’s ice.
Specifi cally, he wants to
know whether the melting is
being caused more by warm
air or warm seawater. The
answer could be crucial to
Earth’s future.
Water brings more heat to
something frozen faster than
air does, as anyone who has
ever defrosted a steak under
the faucet knows.
If Willis’ theory that
much of the damage is from
the water turns out to be cor-
rect, he said, “there’s a lot
higher potential for Green-
land to melt more quickly
than we thought.” And that
means seas rising faster and
coastal communities being
inundated more.
Greenland
contains
enough ice to make world
sea levels rise by 20 feet if
it were all to melt. In a sin-
gle day this month, it lost a
record 13.7 billion tons by
one estimate.
“It’s a little scary,” Willis
said as looked down on an
area fi lled with more water
than ice. “We’re defi nitely
watching the ice sheet dis-
appear in front of us.”
Climate change is eating
away at Greenland’s gla-
ciers in two ways. The most
obvious way is from the
warm air above, which has
been brutal this summer,
with a European heat wave
in July working like a hair
dryer on the ice. The other
T
AP Photo/Mstyslav Chernov
Icebergs are seen from the window of an airplane carrying NASA scientists as they fl y on a mission to track melting ice in
eastern Greenland.
way is from warm, salty
water, some of it from North
America’s Gulf Stream,
nibbling at coastal glaciers
from below.
When University of
Georgia ice scientist Tom
Mote, who isn’t part of
this project, started study-
ing Greenland’s glaciers in
the early 1990s, researchers
really didn’t think the water
was a big factor.
Willis’ project — called
Oceans Melting Greenland,
or OMG — is showing that
it is. Now the question is
how much and how fast.
What Willis is measuring
is the water 660 feet or more
below the surface, which is
warmer and saltier than the
stuff that touches the air. It’s
this deep water that does the
major damage.
To measure this, NASA
is spending fi ve years criss-
crossing the island in a
‘ONE GLACIER RETREATING
LOOKS LIKE CARELESSNESS,
BUT 28 RETREATING IS THE SIGN
OF SOMETHING GOING ON.’
Ruth Mottram | Danish climate scientist
tricked-out
77-year-old
DC-3 built for World War II.
Willis, project manager Ian
McCubbin and mechanic
Rich Gill drop long, cylin-
drical probes through a spe-
cial tube in the fl oor of the
plane, watching as the sen-
sors parachute down and
then dive into the chilly
water.
McCubbin then waits for
a tone on his computer that
tells him the probe is under-
water and measuring tem-
perature and salinity. When
all of the fl ight’s fi ve probes
start signaling — with a
sound McCubbin likens to
“a fax machine or an AOL
modem” — he and Willis
high-fi ve.
Meanwhile, pilots Andy
Ferguson and Don Watrous
bank the plane toward the
blue-green spots, looking
for the next target and point-
ing out stunning giant ice-
bergs and signs of glacial
retreat over the radio.
As the data is radioed
back from one $2,000 probe
now deep in the water near
Kangerlussuaq in east-
ern Greenland, it initially
looks like the temperature
hasn’t changed much over
the last year or two, which
could be good news. But
that’s just one data point.
Each year for the past four
years, NASA has been look-
ing at all of Greenland, and
the numbers overall haven’t
been quite as comforting.
If the water is playing a
much bigger role than scien-
tists thought, it could mean
seas will be rising faster and
higher than expected. That’s
because 90% of the heat
energy from climate change
goes into the oceans, Willis
said. Warm water provides
“a bigger bang for the buck”
than air when it comes to
melting ice, Willis said.
Just how crucial seawater
is to melting was illustrated,
somewhat paradoxically, by
the Jakobshavn glacier, the
fast-shrinking glacier on
Greenland’s more populated
west coast. In recent years,
it suddenly started to grow
a bit, probably because of
a cooling of waters as a
result of a temporary shift in
weather and water-current
patterns, Willis said.
In general, oceans warm
up much more slowly than
the air, yet they stay warmer
longer. The water weakens
glaciers and causes icebergs
to break loose. Those ice-
bergs eventually melt, add-
ing to the seas.
“Some of them are as big
as a city,” Willis said.
A 2019 study by Danish
climate scientist Ruth Mot-
tram looked at 28 glaciers in
Greenland with long-term
data. Nearly all are melting,
with only one or two that
could be considered some-
what stable.
“One glacier retreating
looks like carelessness, but
28 retreating is the sign of
something going on,” Mot-
tram said.
A 2017 study concluded
that coastal glaciers and
icecaps — what Willis is
studying — reached a “tip-
ping point” for ice loss in
1997 and since then have
been rapidly deteriorating.
A NASA satellite found that
Greenland’s ice sheet lost
about 255 billion metric
tons a year between 2003
and 2016, with the loss rate
generally getting worse.
It will take centuries for
all of Greenland’s massive
ice sheet to melt, but how
fast is the key question. If
warm water plays a bigger
role than scientists suspect,
by the year 2100, Greenland
alone could cause 3 or 4 feet
of sea level rise, Willis said.
Other scientists, such
as the University of Col-
orado’s Ted Scambos, say
Greenland’s contribution to
sea level rise by 2100 would
probably be closer to 1 foot.
That’s a big spread.
“I tend toward the higher
number, but I’m hoping for
a lower number,” said Uni-
versity of Maryland Balti-
more County glaciologist
Christopher Shuman, whose
family owns property along
the coast.
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