Modeling the Future of the Greenland Ice Sheet
Narration:
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[Music]
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Narrator: It is easy to imagine Greenland as a land of perpetual ice.
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However, scientists have recently estimated that the Greenland Ice Sheet may
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be gone within the millennium.
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Andy: My name is Andy Aschwanden, I am a Glaciologist with the University
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of Alaska, Fairbanks. I work at the Geophysical Institute.
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Narrator: Andy and his colleagues have used data
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collected by NASA to model some of the possible futures of the Greenland Ice Sheet.
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Andy: So, we see our projection
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of how the Greenland Ice Sheet will retreat
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over the course of the next roughly 300 years.
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It’s really cool that now we can actually watch
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in the animation, in the simulation, how we think it behaves.
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I mean, we put the best physics possible in there and we can
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actually watch what could happen. That is something we could not have done before.
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NASA’s Operation Ice Bridge
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over the past decade has been instrumental in gathering the
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datasets that help drive our model.
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Narrator: This model gives us a more accurate picture of how greenhouse gas
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emissions may affect Greenland - and us - in the future.
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Andy: Of the three scenarios that we tested there was one sort
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of a low emissions, medium emissions,
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and high emission scenario. And,
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at the moment, it looks like we’re on the highest scenario.
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The three different scenarios lead to
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basically three different futures, three different Greenlands.
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If we choose the path we are on right now,
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if we stay on that path, there is actually good chance that within 1000
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years or so, the whole Ice Sheet
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will be gone.
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Narrator: These scenarios show that the melting ice could contribute at least 80% more sea level rise than previous estimates.
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This model helps us understand the dynamic nature of the Greenland
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Ice Sheet, and arms us with the knowledge we need to inform our future.