Greenland glaciers biggest threat if global temperatures continue to rise

Published: Thursday, April 06, 2000

Worried about the effects of global warming, scientists who have been watching the West Antarctic ice sheet for years for signs of melting now say the bigger threat comes from glaciers in Greenland.

Scientists fear that a rise in the Earth's average temperature could make the oceans rise and swamp low-lying coastal cities in the coming century.

New research suggests that Antarctica's second-largest ice sheet is more stable than had been believed. The glaciers of Greenland, more than 9,000 miles to the north, are more likely to melt with dire consequences as Earth warms up, said Kurt M. Cuffey, a geographer at the University of California, Berkeley.

"If nothing is done to stabilize our climate and sea levels rise as much as 6 meters (20 feet), you'll flood the southern half of Florida, the southern half of Louisiana. A two-degree global warming doesn't sound like much, but you have to realize the consequences can be really quite disastrous," said Cuffey, the study's co-author.

The findings are reported in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature.

A United Nations-sponsored panel predicts that average global temperatures will rise two to six degrees in the next 100 years if current greenhouse gas emissions are not curtailed.

Cuffey and co-author Shawn Marshall of the University of British Columbia estimate that Greenland's meltwater raised ocean levels 13 to 20 feet and inundated coastal regions worldwide during the last interglacial period.