Germans caught weighing Greenland every few hours, obsessed with heft

183 gigatons.  Greenland, part of the North America continent is the worlds largest island, and the Germans lust after every ounce of her enormous icy bulk.  It must be the primal Viking Hun Visogoth Saxon attribute that drives this interest in rotund forms.

183 gigatons.  By the grace of Germany the GRACE satellites were launched.  Fast moving low orbiting (450 kilometers) the two probes hurtle along one trailing the other by 137 miles.   Several times a day they dash over Greenland, measuring gravitational pull which as you should know, the more the mass the greater the gravity.  Their flight path becomes a slight mirror image of the mass they pass over, the larger the mass the greater the pull down first on one then the other.   Instruments on these satellites measure these variations between the two as small as one micron, 1/100th the width of a hair, this translates into detecting ice layers as thin as a centimeter over a land mass.

183 gigatons.  With a few exceptions during winter coldest snaps, every trip over Greenland it weighs less.  Greenland is getting lighter by the hour.  It's 6 years since the bathroom scales were shoved under our frosty island lady.  Last month the Germans gave the results.

183 gigatons = weight loss of Greenland in 6 years of monitoring.   According to this alarm set off by the Germans, Global Warming is stripping the ice off Greenland faster than the climate change model's predicted.   Here is Scott Luthcke, he compiles the weight of Greenland every week from the GRACE system, the most precise and the largest capacity bathroom scales ever built.   gigaton=1 billion ton