[LINK] Greenhouse meltdown in North America

[rfmcdonald]

I'd like to thank Will Baird for letting me know about this paper.I may have been quite right to leave my island homeland of Prince Edward Island, on the northeastern coastline of North America, for climatic reasons among others.

Melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet this century may drive more water than previously thought toward the already threatened coastlines of New York, Boston, Halifax and other cities in the northeastern United States and Canada, according to new research.

[. . .]

"If the Greenland melt continues to accelerate, we could see significant impacts this century on the northeast U.S. coast from the resulting sea level rise," says scientist Aixue Hu, the paper's lead author. Hu is at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colo. "Major northeastern cities are directly in the path of the greatest rise."

A study in Nature Geoscience in March warned that warmer water temperatures could shift ocean currents in a way that would raise sea levels off the Northeast by about eight inches more than the average global sea level rise that is expected with global warming.

But it did not include the additional impact of Greenland ice, which at moderate to high melt rates would further accelerate changes in ocean circulation and drive an additional 10 to 30 centimeters (4 to 12 inches) of water toward northeastern North America on top of the average global rise.