Greenland glacier from the air (photo E Wallace, October 2009)

Greenland’s ice mass is melting at a quicker pace than previously believed and consequently adding more water to the oceans, reports Science magazine 13 November. The increased run-off will cause the sea-level to rise by more than was estimated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) 2007 projection for 2100.

Altogether some 1,500 gigatonnes of ice melted between 2000 and 2008, the researchers say, contributing about 4.1 millimetres to sea levels. The ice melt is equally divided between increased run-off and precipitation on the one hand, and ice dynamics, meaning faster-moving glaciers, on the other. Since 2006 ice melting in Greenland has accelerated and contributes 0.75mm per year to the global rise in sea levels.

New measurements have allowed the team of researchers led by Michiel van den Broeke of Utrecht University in the Netherlands to quantify more precisely the sources of the melt since 2000. Several warm summers have increased the melting of the ice mass faster than can be fixed during the winters by snowing and refreezing.

The scientist confirmed their data using GRACE, a space-based system that detects  subtle changes in the earth’s gravitational field due to shifts, such as ice-melt, in the earth’s mass. BBC, TSR

Update 17:05 Afghan election officials have announced that Hamid Karzai is the elected president of Afghanistan and cancelled the second round of the election, scheduled for 7 November. They expressed fears for security and the cost of going ahead with an election without a challenger, who withdrew.

Afghan election officials were to announce this week whether to hold the second round of presidential elections due Saturday 7 November, after challenger Abdullah Abdullah announced his decision to withdraw from the race Sunday, 1 Novmber. Abdullah had asked for the head of the election commission to resign as a condition for his participation. The first round of the election was widely seen to be compromised by massive fraud in favour of President Hamid Karzai.

Western countries had insisted on the run-off, in order to provide Karzai with a semblance of legitimacy, ahead of important decisions by the USA, Afghanistan’s main backer in the war against the Taliban militants and the remnants of al-Qaeda in the country.  US President Barack Obama is to announce a major new US strategy in coming days, and the US administration has said it needed a “credible partner” in Kabul. BBC, CNN, New York Times

Update 17:00 Reports from Kabul say that the Electoral Complaints Commission has finalized its tally and, discarding fraudulent ballots, the new total vote for Afghan President Hamid Karzai gives him 48 percent, less than the 50 percent necessary to avoid a run-off. The new results have been communicated to the Independent Election Commission, which has not yet decided whether to accept them. Nor is it clear what the reaction will be in the president’s office. AP, New York Times

Pressure is mounting on Karzai to accept a run-off election between him and the runner-up in last August’s elections, or to agree to some sort of power-sharing deal. French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner has been holding talks with both sides, and John Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee was also in Kabul this past weekend, 17 and 18 October. The UN-backed Electoral Complaints Commission has been witholding the results of its investigation into massive electoral fraud, which may rob Karzai of his first-round victory. Karzai won with 54 percent of the vote.

A run-off election must be held within two weeks by law, but winter is closing in quickly in Afghanistan and would greatly hamper the logistics of a new election. The US administration is debating whether to send additional troops to Afghanistan to fight an increasingly powerful Taliban insurgency. On Sunday, 18 October, a top aide to US President Obama said that the Afghan government needed to be “a credible partner” for the US to be able to deal with it. CBS News, Christian Science Monitor, Reuters