Over the next five years OMG will study how marine glaciers in Greenland are reacting to the presence of warmer, salty Atlantic water. Photo: Shutterstock
It wasn’t too long ago NASA decided it was appropriate to name a bunch of cosmic debris “WTF.” This week we’ve all learned that a full generational shift has taken place within the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, because it turns out millennials have taken over the responsibility of giving things their sciencey names. Their latest choice, apparently given the thumbs up via text message while somebody got stuck in traffic and couldn’t FaceTime through this meeting, was to name the newest study of ocean climate change “OMG.” As in, “OMG, warmer ocean temperatures are speeding the disappearance of ice sheets from below the water’s surface.”
Oceans Melting Greenland got its official start in April and for the next five years it’s set to study how marine glaciers in Greenland are reacting to the presence of warmer, salty Atlantic water. That, they presume, will give us better estimates of global sea level rise along with climate changes in the 21st century. They’ll collect data by periodically using NASA’s G-III (not to be confused with the Far East Movement’s G6) to fly equipment that will measure glacier thinning and retreat between the changing seasons. Meanwhile, 200 probes (drones, maybe?) will be released along the continental shelf to measure both the salinity and temperature of the water. However, no confirmation on whether or not the probe will direct upload its findings to Facebook and Instagram was available at time of press.
Greenland is the world’s largest island, almost completely covered in ice. It’s estimated that if all of its ice were to melt (695,000 square miles at the surface), global sea levels could increase by as much as six meters. So maybe this whole OMG business isn’t hyperbole at all. That’s a pretty OMG worthy global impact.
