Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 04/19/2012 - 03:46
Forums
Airborne Survey of Polar Ice

what rate does ice melt where you are?

Thu, 04/19/2012 - 12:57

Tim Spuck

That's a difficult question to answer :-) because there are so many variables. For example you are going to see differences between ice melt rates in ice on the north slope vs. ice on the south slope of a mountain. Even ice melt rates between glaciers can vary due to a wide variety of variables. Could you be a bit more specific with your question?Thanks a bunch, Tim

Fri, 04/20/2012 - 08:05

Anonymous

Let's say, the south slope of a mountian. At the top, closests to the sky?

Sun, 04/22/2012 - 12:57

Tim Spuck

A challenging question because so many factors go into it like ... what is the air temperature? Is the ice in a shadow or not? Is it cloudy or sunny?So I'll maybe try and get to the important point. If you combine all of the glaciers in Greenland and look at the average annual loss ... Greenland is loosing around 36 cubic miles of ice each year. So if you could imagine a slab of ice that is 3 miles wide, 6 miles long, and 2 miles deep ... that's how much ice Greenland is losing in a year.
That's a BIG ice cube!
Thanks, Tim