Sea Level Rise Briefing - August 26, 2015

Figure 1 (Nerem) -- Global sea level has been measured accurately and continuously by satellites since 1993.

Credit: Steve Nerem, University of Colorado

Figure 2 (Nerem) -- NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) twin satellites have measured the loss of ice mass from Earth’s polar ice sheets since 2002.

Credit: Nerem/CU-Boulder

Figure 3 (Nerem) -- As measured by the TOPEX/Jason satellites, sea level change in the short-term (top) and longer-term (bottom) can be very different.

Credit: Nerem

Figure 4 (Rignot) -- Laurence C. Smith, Chair of Geography at University of California, Los Angeles, deployed an autonomous drifter in a meltwater river on the surface of the Greenland ice sheet on July 19, 2015. The floating instrument was quickly swept away by the fast-moving glacial waters and ultimately swallowed by a moulin, a sinkhole in the ice. Although the scientists will never be able to recover the device from the depths of the ice sheet, the measurements it took and transmitted on its way down the waters will help scientists better understand how the network of streams and rivers that forms on the surface of the ice sheet when ice melts in the spring and summer contributes to sea level rise.

[CREDIT: NASA/Jefferson Beck]

Figure 5 (Rignot) -- Greenland’s Jakobshavn Glacier, as seen on July 31, 2015, prior to a massive calving of ice in early August.

Credit: NASA’s Earth Observatory

Read more:

Ice Loss From Jakobshavn Glacier

Figure 6 (Rignot) -- Jakobshavn, as seen on August 16, 2015. Credit: NASA’s Earth Observatory

Figure 7 (Rignot) -- NASA’s Operation IceBridge will make a series of flights over Greenland beginning in September with instruments outfitted on the agency’s HU-25C Guardian Falcon.

Credit: Operation IceBridge

Figure 8 (Willis) -- NASA’s new Oceans Melting Greenland (OMG) field campaign will use airborne and shipborne instruments in a six-year effort to better understand how warming ocean waters are interacting with the edge of the ice sheet.

Credit: Josh Willis/NASA JPL/OMG

Figure 9 (Willis) -- Preliminary data from OMG reveals the shape of the sea floor — a key factor in how ocean currents interact with the edges of the ice sheet — near Uummannaq.

Credit: Josh Willis/NASA JPL/OMG

Figure 10 (Willis) -- The TOPEX/Poisedon and Jason satellites have provided a 22-year and counting record of global sea level change.

Credit: NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio

Figure 11 (Willis) -- A side-by-side comparison shows sea surface height in the Pacific Ocean during 2015, compared to 1997.

Credit: NASA JPL