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Book
Author Conkling, Philip W., author

Title The fate of Greenland : lessons from abrupt climate change / Philip Conkling, Richard Alley, Wallace Broecker, and George Denton ; photographs by Gary Comer
Published Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press, [2011]
©2011

Copies

Location Call no. Vol. Availability
 W'BOOL  551.69982 Con/Fog  AVAILABLE
Description 1 online resource (xiv, 216 pages) : illustrations (chiefly color) maps (chiefly color)
Series UPCC book collections on Project MUSE
Contents Lessons from abrupt climate change -- Mystery of the Ice Ages -- Rosetta Stones from the Greenland ice sheet -- A role for all seasons -- The great ocean conveyor -- A wobbly North Atlantic conveyor? -- Greenland's climate signal across the globe -- Carbon dioxide and the fate of the Greenland ice sheet -- Out of the ice : the lessons from Greenland
Summary Viewed from above, Greenland offers an endless vista of whiteness interrupted only by scattered ponds of azure-colored melt water. Ninety percent of Greenland is covered by ice; its ice sheet, the largest outside Antarctica, stretches almost 1,000 miles from north to south and 600 miles from east to west. But this stark view of ice and snow is changing--and changing rapidly. Greenland's ice sheet is melting; the dazzling, photogenic display of icebergs breaking off Greenland's rapidly melting glaciers has become a tourist attraction. The Fate of Greenland documents Greenland's warming with dramatic color photographs and investigates Greenland's climate history for clues about what happens when climate change is abrupt rather than gradual. Geological evidence suggests that Greenland has already been affected by two dramatic changes in climate: the Medieval Warm Period, when warm temperatures in Northern Europe enabled Norse exploration and settlements in Greenland; and the Little Ice Age that followed and apparently wiped out the settlements. Greenland's climate past and present could presage our climate future. Abrupt climate change would be cataclysmic: the melting of Greenland's ice shelf would cause sea levels to rise twenty-four feet worldwide; lower Manhattan would be underwater and Florida's coastline would recede to Orlando. The planet appears to be in a period of acute climate instability, exacerbated by carbon dioxide we pour into the atmosphere. As this book makes clear, it is in all of our interests to pay attention to Greenland.--Publisher description
Analysis Carbon dioxide
Climate change (Anthropogenic)
Environmental impact
Greenland
History
Overseas item
Notes Includes index
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Notes Description based on print version record
Subject Climatic changes -- Greenland.
Global warming -- Greenland.
SUBJECT Greenland http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n79059221 -- Environmental conditions. http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh99005384
Author Alley, Richard B., author
Broecker, Wallace S., 1931- author
Comer, Gary, photographer
Denton, George H., 1939- author
LC no. 2010040698
ISBN 0262295466
1283148080
9780262295468
9781283148085