(no title)
czinck | 2 years ago
Yes, that's generally what happens to glaciers even ignoring climate change. The bottom melts, but is replaced by snow/ice that accumulated on top. Glaciers grow top down, not bottom up. But, if you lower the top so it's warmer, less ice accumulates, which can't replace all that melts, and so you get net shrinking.
Arnt|2 years ago
There is another possibility, though: Maybe it's saying that a large area of Greenland's ice surface is at an elevation where the glaciers are barely staying neutral. If that's what it tries to say, then having all of that area sink by 3m means that a large area goes into decline and stays in a state of decline. The surface sinking by 3m, 10m, 20m or 50m would then be much the same, just different speeds of irreversible decline.