Oh, Great! Another Climate Change Monster: "Zombie Ice"

"Zombie ice" from Greenland is
yet another in a long and growing 
list of threats created by
climate change. 

 The characters in "The Walking Dead" are scary, but at least they aren't real, so we're good, right?

Maybe not. The zombie apocalypse isn't upon us, but a "zombie" from Greenland poses real trouble.  

A study released in August warns us of "zombie ice."

No, the Abominable Snowman is not going to come down and eat your brains. Instead, the zombie ice is going to eventually flood your favorite coastal town.

According to the Associated Press, Greenland zombie ice is:

"....doomed ice that, while still attached to thicker areas of ice, is no longer getting replenished by parent glaciers now receiving less snow. Without replenishment, the doomed ice is melting from climate change and will inevitably raise seas, said study co-author William Colgan, a glaciologist at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland. 

'It's dead ice. It's just going to melt and disappear from the ice sheet,' Colgan said in an interview. 'This ice has been consigned to the ocean, regardless of what climate (emissions) scenario we take now.'"

This whole thing makes projections of how much Greenland will contribute to sea level rise worse. Previously scientists thought the current rate of Greenland melt would, on average, raise global sea levels by five inches.

But if you take into consideration the "zombie ice," we're talking something like ten inches. 

That doesn't sound like much, really, but it does make a big difference. Many coastal areas are pretty flat, and a modest increase in sea levels can bring water pretty far inland. Plus, if you add ten inches to the storm surges associated with hurricanes and powerful coastal storms like nor'easters, you can add a lot of damage to what would have already occurred with the storm.

Already, in some parts of the world, including many coastlines in the United States, sea level rise has caused an increasing number of sunny weather coastal floods. Those occasions are when the tug of the moon creates higher tides. That never used to be a problem, but the higher moon tides, combined with the now higher sea levels, creates minor but still nuisance coastal floods

These take the form of flooded streets, water surrounding coastal cottages and salty water infiltrating aquifers.

When I started reading the article, the problem I had is, OK, ten inches of sea level rise....when??

The study says "within this century" but doesn't seem to be more precise than that. Scrolling down the AP article does provide some context:

"Time is the key unknown here and a bit of a problem with the study, said two outside ice scientists, Leigh Stearns of the University of Kansas and Sophie Nowicki of the University of Buffalo. The researchers in the study said they couldn't estimate the timing of the committed melting, yet in the last sentence they mentions, 'within this century' without supporting it, Stearns said."

Colgan acknowledged he's hazy on the timing. It depends on how many years are especially warm. The year 2012, and to a lesser extent 2019, were bad melt years in Greenland. Huge amounts of ice were lost as water to the oceans.

Those years were pretty abnormal, but Colgan points out that years that seem normal would have been really abnormally warm half a century ago.  

This study, of course, is just one piece of the puzzle. On a larger scale, climate "tipping points" loom if the world continues to warm, even just a little bit more.

Zombie ice will raise sea levels some. Factor in all the other reasons why climate change will raise sea levels, and you can see why coastal areas area in real trouble.