News Telecon: Sea Level Science

Original air date: Aug. 26 at 9:30 a.m. PT (12:30 p.m. ET, 1630 UTC)
NASA hosted a media teleconference to discuss recent insights on sea level rise and the continuing challenge of predicting how fast and how much sea level will rise. The panelists for this briefing were:

-- Michael Freilich, director of NASA's Earth Science Division at the agency's headquarters in Washington
-- Steve Nerem, lead for NASA's Sea Level Change Team at the University of Colorado at Boulder
-- Josh Willis, oceanographer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California
-- Eric Rignot, glaciologist at the University of California, Irvine and JPL

[橋本絵莉子]

What about the methane release in Greenland, Arctic
and from the Ocean is there monitoring ?
What do these methane data say ?

[bradvan]

what are the chances of runaway melting in sense 1 large glacier calves rising ocean levels 1 meter the 1 meter ocean rise then pushes warm ocean water under other glaciers in greenland / antarctica the upward pressure from ocean rise under leading edge causing more calving causing more ocean rise 1 meter so now 2 meter causing another large glacier break off raising another 2 meter so on and so on . Could something like this happen in short time frame like 1 summer ? seems like a highly likely chain of events due to how many large glaciers are within 1-4 meters ocean level . Do you predict possible chains like this by a identifying glaciers within 1 to say 20 meter ? If all the ice melted it's 60 meters ocean rise but a lot of ice is above 60 meter so what % of ice is within ? 40 meters ? that could actually be affected by possible event ?

[fiasco]

Since this presentation was published NASA has released an important re-evaluation of the critical melting of Antarctica - which is reference frequently here. Including specific mention of its contribution to the 3.2mm/year total rise.
The new NASA paper finds that Antarctica is in fact GAINING ICE, not losing ice after all at all. Which would mean it is NOT contributing to further sea level rise.
Please also consider when assessing this material that just 18, 000 years ago, sea level was 120METRES below current levels.
Simply by picking up a calculator it can be discovered that therefore the average sea level rise during the last 18, 000 years was 6.7mm/year - i.e. twice that which we currently see.
Which does help to put current levels into perspective.
Anyway - to find the latest paper type "NASA Mass Gains Antarctica Ice Sheet Exceed Losses Zwally" into Google.

[bitiminicik]

I'm confused. I always thought water expands when it gets colder. Now also when it gets warmer?