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Listen "Tamsin Edwards - Greenland, Antarctica and climate predictions"
Episode Synopsis
Tamsin Edwards, Reader in Climate Change at King's College London, discusses changes occurring in Greenland and Antarctica ice and climate models.
About Tamsin Edwards
"I’m a climate scientist and Reader in Climate Change at King’s College London.
My work involves quantifying the uncertainties in climate model predictions, and particularly the changes that we’ll see for the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets’ contributions to sea level rise."
How does climate change affect ice sheets?
Greenland and Antarctica are fascinating because they encapsulate important parts of climate change. We don’t think about the ice caps much. We think of them as something remote or something ancient, which they are, but they are such key parts of our climate system that the way that climate change is affecting them will last for many generations of humanity. Even if the impacts of sea-level rise take decades or hundreds of years to come about, the partial or total loss of the ice sheets will take millennia to replace. That’s a profound consequence of climate change. Even if we can adapt to extra coastal flooding, even if we move away from the coasts, even if we think we can live with that sea-level rise, the loss of the Greenland ice sheet or the West Antarctic ice sheet is something that would be hard to forgive ourselves for.
The two ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica are quite different. They are affected by the climate in different ways. Greenland is a more straightforward case of what we think of when we think of melting ice. Greenland is a big block of ice sitting up in the northern hemisphere. It is mainly affected by climate change through the warming of the air over the ice sheet, which has a direct melting effect on the surface. Impacts from the ocean also have an effect. But primarily it’s about the balance between the melting at the surface and any snowfall that’s occurring, particularly in the centre of the ice sheet, where it’s colder and higher. So that’s a more standard way of thinking about melting ice.
Key Points
• Greenland and Antarctica are fascinating because they encapsulate important parts of climate change. The way that climate change is affecting them will last for many generations. The partial or total loss of the ice sheets will take millenia to replace.
• The two ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica are quite different. Greenland is mainly affected by climate change through the warming of the air over the ice sheet. In Antarctica, warm ocean water also causes erosion underneath the ice sheet.
• At the core of climate models, such as models of Antarctica and Greenland, we have some key certainties. But at the same time, it’s crucial to bear in mind the balance between the known and the unknown, the certain and the uncertain.
• We have to factor climate change into every detail of our planning, of our expectations, of every facet of our society, including equality and how to help the vulnerable, the people who are already struggling to live with today’s extreme weather events.
• We have to be able to reach out. We have to understand what people are trying to say to us and listen to them. We have to understand how to change the things that we say so that they can be understood by other people, too.
About Tamsin Edwards
"I’m a climate scientist and Reader in Climate Change at King’s College London.
My work involves quantifying the uncertainties in climate model predictions, and particularly the changes that we’ll see for the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets’ contributions to sea level rise."
How does climate change affect ice sheets?
Greenland and Antarctica are fascinating because they encapsulate important parts of climate change. We don’t think about the ice caps much. We think of them as something remote or something ancient, which they are, but they are such key parts of our climate system that the way that climate change is affecting them will last for many generations of humanity. Even if the impacts of sea-level rise take decades or hundreds of years to come about, the partial or total loss of the ice sheets will take millennia to replace. That’s a profound consequence of climate change. Even if we can adapt to extra coastal flooding, even if we move away from the coasts, even if we think we can live with that sea-level rise, the loss of the Greenland ice sheet or the West Antarctic ice sheet is something that would be hard to forgive ourselves for.
The two ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica are quite different. They are affected by the climate in different ways. Greenland is a more straightforward case of what we think of when we think of melting ice. Greenland is a big block of ice sitting up in the northern hemisphere. It is mainly affected by climate change through the warming of the air over the ice sheet, which has a direct melting effect on the surface. Impacts from the ocean also have an effect. But primarily it’s about the balance between the melting at the surface and any snowfall that’s occurring, particularly in the centre of the ice sheet, where it’s colder and higher. So that’s a more standard way of thinking about melting ice.
Key Points
• Greenland and Antarctica are fascinating because they encapsulate important parts of climate change. The way that climate change is affecting them will last for many generations. The partial or total loss of the ice sheets will take millenia to replace.
• The two ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica are quite different. Greenland is mainly affected by climate change through the warming of the air over the ice sheet. In Antarctica, warm ocean water also causes erosion underneath the ice sheet.
• At the core of climate models, such as models of Antarctica and Greenland, we have some key certainties. But at the same time, it’s crucial to bear in mind the balance between the known and the unknown, the certain and the uncertain.
• We have to factor climate change into every detail of our planning, of our expectations, of every facet of our society, including equality and how to help the vulnerable, the people who are already struggling to live with today’s extreme weather events.
• We have to be able to reach out. We have to understand what people are trying to say to us and listen to them. We have to understand how to change the things that we say so that they can be understood by other people, too.
In God we trust