The amount of Greenland ice that melted on Tuesday could cover FL in 2” of water

cnn.com

5 points·indigodaddy··6 comments

It seems the Greenland sheet (684,000 cu mi) has around 1/10 of the volume of the Antarctic ice sheet (6,400,000 cubic miles; figures from Wikipedia).

Not that many years ago, those numbers were hard to find. Somebody's been thinking.

We should have taken this seriously 20 years ago.

Really? Why?

Ice is melting at a faster rate than I thought it would. We should have done something in the 2000s to switch from coal to solar or water turbines.

if it had melted, then it should cover, not could cover! I'm sure that there's some tidal time lag, but such a significant rise to flood FL in 2", well, I think the evidence would be kinda obvious

They're just trying to give you an interpretation of the total volume, which is (1 Florida area) times (2 inches). It would not actually raise the global sea level enough to cover Florida by 2 inches of water, which would indeed be obvious.

The description is misleading: why pick Florida? Yes, Florida is a state with more concern than most, but they could just as easily have said that it would cover Rhode Island by 108" of water, or France by half an inch.

But then, nobody really has a good feel for units of volume. No matter how you phrase it, it is a lot of water.

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