Friday, July 13, 2018

Ice Loss Since 2002 Greater than Mass of Mars' Moon Phobos

While Arctic and Antarctic sea ice have increased compared to last year, the trends are still very much downward. Based on the data I've found, the ice loss since 2002 for Arctic sea ice volume, Greenland mass balance, and Antarctica mass balance is larger than the mass of Mars' moon Phobos.

Here then are the numbers (t=metric ton, G=109, T=1012):


where, as usual,
change=linear_trend*time_interval.

I haven't looked up the mass balance for land-based glaciers, but surely it's less than zero.

Mars' moon Phobos has a mass of 1.0659e16 kg, or 10.7 Tt.

So Earth has lost more ice than the mass of Phobos, and just since 2002. Amazing.
Posted by David Appell at 7/13/2018 03:25:00 PM

2 comments:

David in Cal said...

This comparison is not a terribly helpful, since most of us don't know how big Phobos is. Since Phobos is a moon, one might imagine that its size is comparable to the magnitude of earth's moon. In fact, the diameter of Phobos is 14 miles, while the diameter of earth's moon is 2,159 miles.

Cheers

5:26 PM
David Appell said...

That it’s equal to the mass of ANY moon is pretty amazing, IMHO.

6:51 PM

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