Greenland Ice Sheet: “Starting to Slip”

Jul 29, 2013: Research scientists provide insights on recent ‘unprecedented’ […]

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Climate State

Date Posted:

July 29, 2013

Jul 29, 2013: Research scientists provide insights on recent ‘unprecedented’ melting of Greenland’s interior ice sheet.

Latest video for The Yale Forum on Climate Change & the Media, the first since returning from Greenland – includes interviews with Ice expert Alun Hubbard, who I met in Kangerlussuaq, as well as a snip from Richard Alley, at June’s Chapman conference in Granby, CO, and Jason Box, who spoke from our DarkSnowProject HQ in Sisimiut, in early July.

Takeaway – Greenland represents 22 feet of sea level rise, it’s moving faster than anyone thought it could just a few years ago, and there are processes occurring deep in the ice that may make even faster inevitable. According to Hubbard, we may we witnessing the deglaciation of a major ice sheet, with serious global implications Source

Recent Science from Greenland

  • Marine-terminating glaciers drain nearly 90% of the Greenland ice mass
  • Under-ice motions (basal sliding) play a very large role in dynamics of ice sheet’s
  • Vertical uplift, in excess of post glacial rebound, due to rapid crustal response to recent ice mass losses
  • Uplift ‘pulses’ correlated with short-lived events such as seasonal surface melt anomalies
  • Greenland Ice Sheet interacting extensively and rapidly with surrounding ocean (see Fig) and overlying atmosphere

Under the Ice: A closer look at recent Antarctica and Greenland Ice Melt

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2 Comments

  1. IBI Watch 8/4/13 | IBI Watch August 4, 2013 at 2:45 pm - Reply

    […] the same thing is happening on land. In particular, Greenland. Watch this video and see the evidence that the melt is speeding up. This is not a theory of future change. It is […]

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