University of Austin researchers working with NASA satellite data have determined that the Greenland ice sheet is melting three times faster than previously thought. It is currently dumping 57.3 cubic miles of water into the oceans each year. This equates to a half millimeter is ocean rise each year. While that may not seem like much, its important to remember that as melt increases, it accelerates due to the fact that pooling water on its surface is warmer and almost 100% less reflective. It absorbs the sun’s heat instead of reflecting it.

Update: this is adding .6 millimeter of ocean level rise annually. We have been tracking a 1.8 mm annual rise over the last 100 years so this represents a 30% increase from this source alone. over ten years this represents nearly an inch of rise.

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Check out this new imaging satellite designed to capture cloud patterns and content including moisture and aerosols. I’m not a scientist but this stuff looks pretty cool. Hopefully NASA won’t cave into administration pressure to downplay its usefulness in tracking climate change indicators.

Can I attach a wind mill to my suburban house? Should I?

My neighbors probably would say no! But people are starting to consider adding wind power to their homes. Find a wind map of your state (this is a commercial site with tons of good information, unfortunately it is built with ancient frame technology that doesn’t let me pick URLs for specific areas of the site- very bad SEO strategy guys!). It doesn’t show my area of NY (Rochester) being a good candidate for wind power.

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Malcom Gladwell offers a typically well-written piece on geothermal energy as used by his father in their family home in Ontario, Canada which is not far from here. Gladwell’s father offers a very clear explanation of how this clean technology works, including (fear not), some basic math.