Million Dollar Question
If the West Antarctic Ice Sheet completely melted, the East Coast of North America would experience sea levels more than four feet higher than had been previously predicted – almost 21 feet – and the West Coast, as well as Miami, Fla., would be about a foot higher than that. Most of Europe would have seas about 18 feet higher.“If this did happen, there would also be many other impacts that go far beyond sea level increase, including much higher rates of coastal erosion, greater damage from major storm events, problems with ground water salinization, and other issues,“ Clark said. “And there could be correlated impacts on other glaciers and ice sheets in coastal areas that could tend to destabilize them as well.“
As the contours of climate change have started to come into focus, glaciologists — a tiny band of scientists in a long-neglected field — have suddenly found themselves briefing Congress, and consulting with the United Nations. Perplexed graduate students, stuck in the field in Greenland, were asked to educate visiting dignitaries. The dawning realities of global warming made it evident that one of the gravest threats facing the planet depended upon a field of science that most people had never even heard of. "How fast will the ice sheets lose their mass into the sea?" asks Dr.Peter Clark, a professor of geosciences at Oregon State University. "That's the million-dollar question."
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According to widely accepted models, a dramatic cooling event and significant drop in sea levels roughly 34 million years ago, during the Eocene-Oligocene transition, should have resulted in widespread erosion across the continents. This would have deposited vast amounts of sandy material onto the ocean floor.
The Eocene-Oligocene transition marked one of the most extreme climate shifts since the extinction of the dinosaurs, transforming Earth’s climate from a “greenhouse” into an “icehouse” one.
Yet,
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