Melting Icecaps and the Global Ocean (Updated) We're doooooomed,
doooo-- wait a minute. If the Greenland icecap sees an even-
more-significant melt, how soon do you need to pack your bags
and head for the high country? Unless you live along the
Atlantic coastlines of North America or Europe, you'll have a
few decades, at least. And if the Antarctic icecap melts, we'll
have even longer -- at least 50 years, probably much more. These
are the surprising results of research undertaken by Detlef
Stammer of the University of Hamburg, Germany, written up in
"Response of the global ocean to Greenland and Antarctic ice
melting," published in the Journal of Geophysical Research. New
Scientist summarizes his findings thusly: ... the majority of
Greenland's meltwater will stay in the Atlantic Ocean for at
least 50 years, causing sea levels here to rise faster than
expected. "The Greenland ice cap is much less of a threat to
tropical islands in the Pacific than it is for the coasts of
North America and Europe," he says. [.