http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/12/111209123214.htmThe 2010 Uplift Anomaly (green arrows), superimposed on a map showing the 2010 Melting Day Anomaly (shaded in red), which was produced by R. Simmon of the NASA Earth Observatory using data provided by M. Tedesco. (Credit: Courtesy of Ohio State University.)
In a presentation December 9 at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco, Bevis described the study's implications for climate change.
"Pulses of extra melting and uplift imply that we'll experience pulses of extra sea level rise," he said. "The process is not really a steady process."
Because the solid earth is elastic, Bevis and his team can use the natural flexure of the Greenland bedrock to measure the weight of the ice sheet, just like the compression of a spring in a bathroom scale measures the weight of the person standing on it.
Bevis is the principal investigator for the Greenland GPS Network (GNET), and he's confident that the anomalous 2010 uplift that GNET detected is due to anomalous ice loss during 2010: "Really, there is no other explanation. The uplift anomaly correlates with maps of the 2010 melting day anomaly. In locations where there were many extra days of melting in 2010, the uplift anomaly is highest."