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2010 Spike in Greenland Ice Loss Lifted Bedrock, GPS Reveals

By Guest PostDecember 10, 2011Environmentamerican geophysical union, bedrock, climate change, dana john caccamise, eric c kendrick, german aerospace center, gnet, gps stations, grace, gravity recovery and climate experiment, greenland coast, greenland gps network, greenland ice sheet, hao zhou, ice, ice sheet, implications, island, jason e box, jian wang, k brown, melting season, michael bevis, NASA, natural response, ohio state university, san francisco, satellites, southern greenland, temperature, terry j wilson

SAN FRANCISCO – An unusually hot melting season in 2010 accelerated ice loss in southern Greenland by 100 billion tons – and large portions of the island’s bedrock rose an additional quarter of an inch in response.

That’s the finding from a network of nearly 50 GPS stations planted along the Greenland coast to measure the bedrock’s natural response to the ever-diminishing weight of ice above it.

Every year as the Greenland Ice Sheet melts, the rocky coast rises, explained Michael Bevis, Ohio Eminent Scholar in Geodynamics and professor in the School of Earth Sciences at Ohio State University. Some GPS stations around Greenland routinely detect uplift of 15 mm (0.59 inches) or more, year after year. But a temperature spike in 2010 lifted the bedrock a detectably higher amount over a short five-month period – as high as 20 mm (0.79 inches) in some locations. (more…)

NASA Research Confirms it’s a Small World, After All

By Guest PostAugust 17, 2011Scienceatmosphere, baseline interferometry, champs sur marne, changes in earth size, charles darwin, delft university of technology, doppler orbitography and radiopositioning integrated by satellite, earth expansion contraction theory, earth is a small world, earth lithosphere, earth orbit, earth radius, france, french satellite system, geophysical research letters, global climate change, global positioning system, grace, gravity recovery and climate experiment, ground navigation, high precision space geodesy, international terrestrial reference frame, land, large scale climate events like el nino and la nina, models of ocean bottom pressure, mother nature, NASA, ocean, solid earth, the netherlands, tracking spacecraft, walt disney, xiaoping wu

A NASA-led research team has confirmed what Walt Disney told us all along: Earth really is a small world, after all.

Since Charles Darwin’s time, scientists have speculated that the solid Earth might be expanding or contracting. That was the prevailing belief, until scientists developed the theory of plate tectonics, which explained the large-scale motions of Earth’s lithosphere, or outermost shell. Even with the acceptance of plate tectonics half a century ago, some Earth and space scientists have continued to speculate on Earth’s possible expansion or contraction on various scientific grounds.

Now a new NASA study, published recently in Geophysical Research Letters, has essentially laid those speculations to rest. Using a cadre of space measurement tools and a new data calculation technique, the team detected no statistically significant expansion of the solid Earth. (more…)

Tag Archives: gravity recovery and climate experiment

2010 Spike in Greenland Ice Loss Lifted Bedrock, GPS Reveals

NASA Research Confirms it’s a Small World, After All