The Great Climate Migration Has Begun

[David Lockmiller]

Ryan R. Neely III, a climate scientist at the University of Leeds who studied under Dr. Steffen, said that not long ago crevasses in the area where Dr. Steffen was working “were unheard-of,” but that they had begun emerging with the stresses on the ice sheet created by warming.

“In the end,” he said, “it looks like climate change actually claimed him as a victim.”

Dr. Neely called his old mentor (“Koni” to his friends) a “larger than life explorer-scientist that you typically only get the chance to read about.”

Understanding Greenland’s ice sheet is crucial to understanding climate change and sea level rise. Current projections say that if the planet warms by two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) over preindustrial times, average sea levels will rise by more than two feet, and 32 million to 80 million people will be exposed to coastal flooding.

Greenland’s ice sheet, more than a mile thick, is the second largest mass of freshwater ice on the planet, after Antarctica. It is already a major contributor to the sea level rise.

Konrad Steffen, an Arctic scientist whose work showed that climate change is melting Greenland’s vast ice sheet with increasing speed, died on Saturday in an accident near a research station he created there 30 years ago. He was 68.

Police investigators said he had fallen into a crevasse in the ice and drowned in the deep water below.

(Source: New York Times obituary – August 14, 2020.)

Dr. Steffen told Mr. Gertner that the accumulating risks of climate change had not yet sunk in. If people hear that scientists have projected that warming will increase by two degrees by the year 2100, he said, they might dismiss it, saying “two degrees is not so bad.”

But that is only the start, he warned. “Sorry,” he said. “It won’t stop there. The melting won’t stop there. The curve gets steeper and steeper.” ["exponential curves" for those familiar with corona virus pandemic data]

Dr. Box said he wanted to return to the site next year. “We’ve got to keep the measurements running,” he said.