• About
    • Which Energy Mix is this?
  • Climate News Network Archive
  • Contact
Celebrating our 1,000th edition. The climate news you need
No Result
View All Result
The Energy Mix
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
SUBSCRIBE
DONATE
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
SUBSCRIBE
DONATE
No Result
View All Result
The Energy Mix
No Result
View All Result
  FEATURED
Soaring Fertilizer Prices Could Deliver ‘Silver Lining’ For Emissions, But Farmers Struggle to Limit Use June 26, 2022
BREAKING: UN Nature Summit, the ‘Paris Conference for Biodiversity’, Moves to Montreal in December June 19, 2022
‘LET’S SUE BIG OIL’: Legal Team Launches Class Action Campaign for B.C. Municipalities June 17, 2022
‘It Could Have Been Any of Us’, Colleague Says, After Brazil Confirms Murders of Bruno Pereira, Dom Phillips June 17, 2022
Infrastructure Gap a ‘Life and Death’ Matter as Northern Canada Warms June 17, 2022
Next
Prev
Home Climate News Network

Greenland ice melt feeds glacier instability

December 6, 2019
Reading time: 3 minutes
Primary Author: Tim Radford

A moulin

A moulin

 

In a runaway effect, the Greenland ice melt lets surface water gurgle down to the bedrock – and at unexpected speeds.

LONDON, 6 December, 2019 – British scientists have caught a huge ice sheet in the act of draining away, with significant effects on its surroundings: they have seen what happens to the water created by the Greenland ice melt.

For the first time – and with help from drones – researchers have witnessed water flowing at a million cubic metres an hour from the surface of ice sheets through caverns in the ice and down to the glacial bedrock.

The study does not change the big picture of increasingly rapid melt as greenhouse gases build up in the atmosphere, and ever more of the northern hemisphere’s biggest ice cap flows downhill to raise global sea levels.

But it does throw light on the mechanisms by which glaciers turn to sea water, and it does suggest that many estimates of melt rate so far might prove to be under-estimates.

Greenland is the planet’s second largest ice sheet and the biggest single contributor to global sea level rise. Researchers have been alarmed for years about the increasing rate of summer melt and the accelerating speed of what had once been imperceptible glacial flows.

“These glaciers are already moving quite fast, so the effect of the lakes may not appear as dramatic as on slower-moving glaciers elsewhere, but the overall effect is in fact very significant”

And researchers from the universities of Cambridge, Aberystwyth and Lancaster have now been able to put a measure on water surface loss.

They report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that they used custom-built aerial drones and complex computer modelling to work out how fractures form below vast lakes of meltwater that collect on the surface of the Store Glacier on the island’s northwestern sheet.

They watched splits form in the glacial ice, to suddenly open up an escape route for the supraglacial pool. As they watched, such fractures became caverns called moulins, down which in one case five million cubic metres of water – think of 2,000 Olympic swimming pools – flowed in just five hours.

The ice of the glacier is typically a kilometre thick, so the scientists may have observed the planet’s longest waterfall. And as the ice drained away to the bottom of the ice sheet, it may have served as a lubricant to speed up glacier flow over the bedrock.

The ice sheet lifted by half a metre, presumably in response to the sub-surface flood, and four kilometres downstream glacial speed picked up from a speed of two metres to more than five metres a day.

Daily billion-tonne loss

“It’s possible we’ve under-estimated the effects of these glaciers on the overall instability of the Greenland ice sheet. It’s a rare thing to observe these fast-draining lakes – we were lucky to be in the right place at the right time,” said Tom Chudley, of the Scott Polar Research Institute in Cambridge, one of the authors.

Until now, scientists have been able to estimate glacial flow and surface melt only by satellite studies – which reveal little of the detail – or direct on-the-ground measurement under conditions that are difficult even in good weather.

But even with these constraints researchers have been able to calculate the shrinkage of the Greenland ice sheet at the rate of a billion tonnes a day, as temperatures rise in response to ever-increasing use of fossil fuels around the globe.

The next step is to deploy drilling equipment for a closer look at how the water gets below the glacier to reach the bedrock, and calculate how the ice sheet may change not just over hours but over the coming decades as well.

“These glaciers are already moving quite fast, so the effect of the lakes may not appear as dramatic as on slower-moving glaciers elsewhere,” said Poul Christofferson, who led the project, “but the overall effect is in fact very significant.” – Climate News Network



in Climate News Network

The latest climate news and analysis, direct to your inbox

Subscribe

Related Posts

stux / Pixabay
Air & Marine

Big Seven European Airlines Lag on Reducing Sky-High Emissions: Report

June 13, 2022
71
Ars Electronica/flickr
Solar

Unique ‘Smartflower’ Microgrid to Power Saskatchewan High School

June 13, 2022
150
http://midwestenergynews.com/2013/10/24/as-pipeline-concerns-mount-a-renewed-focus-on-the-great-lakes-enbridge-mackinac-line-5/
Pipelines / Rail Transport

Line 5 Closure Brings Negligible Rise in Gas Prices, Enbridge Consultant Finds

June 10, 2022
203

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

I agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy.

Trending Stories

The federal government's Cliff Street Power Plant is at the centre of Ottawa's plans to reduce natural gas demand. Photo: PWGSC

EXCLUSIVE: Ontario Regulator Refuses New Pipeline, Tells Enbridge to Plan for Lower Gas Demand

May 30, 2022
5.2k
Jason Woodhead/Flickr

Trans Mountain Pipeline On Track to Lose $600 Million, Parliamentary Budget Officer Finds

June 24, 2022
341
Ben_Kerckx/Pixabay

Plastics Cited as ‘Fossil Industry’s Plan B’ as Guilbeault Announces Partial Ban

June 24, 2022
219
Bruce Reeve/Flickr

Opinion: Ontario’s New ‘Carbon Tax’ Looks Like the One Doug Ford Fought

June 7, 2022
1.6k
eloialferez66/pixnio

Toronto’s New Backyard Homes Will Help Fight Sprawl

June 24, 2022
70
Greg Goebel/Wikimedia Commons

Canadian Pension Board Invests $141M in Chinese Coal Projects, Undercutting Federal Phaseout Policy

July 29, 2020
2.3k

Recent Posts

David/flickr

U.S. Supreme Court Expected to Gut Emission Controls as Climate Scientists Petition for Plan B

June 26, 2022
1
pxhere

Environmental Racism Bill Passes Second Reading in House of Commons

June 26, 2022
1
Graco/Facebook

Soaring Fertilizer Prices Could Deliver ‘Silver Lining’ For Emissions, But Farmers Struggle to Limit Use

June 26, 2022
2
stockvault

Animal Agriculture Could Reduce Future Pandemic Risk, UK Researchers Say

June 26, 2022
1
Gustavo Petro Urrego/flickr

Colombia’s President-Elect Has ‘Ambitious’ Plans to Halt Amazon Deforestation

June 26, 2022
1
Adam E. Moreira/wikimedia commons

Suspend Transit Fares, Not Gas Tax, Climate Advocates Urge Biden

June 26, 2022
1
Next Post

What's Driving the Antarctic Meltdown

The Energy Mix

Copyright 2022 © Smarter Shift Inc. and Energy Mix Productions Inc. All rights reserved.

Navigate Site

  • About
  • Contact
  • Privacy Policy and Copyright
  • Cookie Policy

Follow Us

No Result
View All Result
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities

Copyright 2022 © Smarter Shift Inc. and Energy Mix Productions Inc. All rights reserved.

Manage Cookie Consent
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behaviour or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes. The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
Manage options Manage services Manage vendors Read more about these purposes
View preferences
{title} {title} {title}