{"id":2290,"date":"2012-07-24T15:01:31","date_gmt":"2012-07-24T19:01:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/?p=2290"},"modified":"2012-07-24T15:01:31","modified_gmt":"2012-07-24T19:01:31","slug":"greenland-ice-melt-measured-by-nasa-satellites-reaches-unprecedented-level","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/2012\/07\/greenland-ice-melt-measured-by-nasa-satellites-reaches-unprecedented-level\/","title":{"rendered":"Greenland Ice Melt, Measured By NASA Satellites, Reaches Unprecedented Level"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/2012\/07\/24\/greenland-ice-melt-nasa_n_1698129.html\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/o-NASA-GREENLAND-MELT-570.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"399\" height=\"363\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Unprecedented melting of Greenland&#8217;s ice sheet this month has stunned NASA scientists and has highlighted broader concerns that the region is losing a remarkable amount of ice overall.<\/p>\n<p>According to a NASA press release, about half of Greenland&#8217;s surface ice sheet naturally melts during an average summer. But the data from three independent satellites this July, analyzed by NASA and university scientists, showed that in less than a week, the amount of thawed ice sheet surface skyrocketed from 40 percent to 97 percent.<\/p>\n<p>In over 30 years of observations, satellites have never measured this amount of melting, which reaches nearly all of Greenland&#8217;s surface ice cover.<\/p>\n<p>When Son Nghiem of NASA&#8217;s Jet Propulsion Laboratory observed the recent melting phenomenon, he said in the NASA press release, &#8220;This was so extraordinary that at first I questioned the result: Was this real or was it due to a data error?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Scientists at NASA&#8217;s Goddard Space Flight Center, University of Georgia-Athens and City University of New York all confirmed the remarkable ice melt.<\/p>\n<p>NASA&#8217;s cryosphere program manager, Tom Wagner, credited the power of satellites for observing the melt and explained to The Huffington Post that, although this specific event may be part of a natural variation, &#8220;We have abundant evidence that Greenland is losing ice, probably because of global warming, and it&#8217;s significantly contributing to sea level rise.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><strong>MORE:<\/strong> \u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/2012\/07\/24\/greenland-ice-melt-nasa_n_1698129.html\" target=\"_blank\">Greenland Ice Melt, Measured By NASA Satellites, Reaches Unprecedented Level<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Unprecedented melting of Greenland&#8217;s ice sheet this month has stunned NASA scientists and has highlighted broader concerns that the region is losing a remarkable amount of ice overall. According to a NASA press release, about half of Greenland&#8217;s surface ice sheet naturally melts during an average summer. But the data from three independent satellites this&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[257,22],"tags":[996,258,292,1323,290],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2290"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2290"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2290\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2297,"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2290\/revisions\/2297"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}