Using radar images acquired by European ERS-1 and -2 satellites, scientists from British Antarctic Survey (BAS) tracked the flow rate of more than 300 previously unstudied glaciers. They found a 12% increase in glacier speed from 1993 to 2003. These observations, echoing recent findings from coastal Greenland, indicate that the cause is the melting of the lower glaciers, which flow directly into the sea.
Glaciers tend to move at rather, er, glacial speeds, right? But glaciers around the world are disappearing at a "rapid" pace. This is but one article showing the increasing pace with which glaciers are moving into the ocean.
In An Inconvenient Truth Al Gore talked about this, and to me it sounded like he claimed that one day the glaciers covering Greenland would suddenly whoomph into the Atlantic Ocean and lickety split that global conveyor would stop just like that. But it seems instead it's just going to be an ever quickening pace.
