Sep Updates on Greenland’s Ice

The NYT’s Dot Earth blog has an update on Greenland’s melting ice – Updates on Greenland’s Ice.

New research on the dynamics of Greenland’s ice sheets complicates efforts to forecast sea level rise in this century, as the Green Blog reports. Expanding fields of crevasses appear to be limiting the flow of water to the base of the ice through tube-like moulins. That flow has been thought to ease the seaward movement of the ice over bedrock. But the crevasses also warm the ice as liquid water descends deep inside the frozen mass, with that process also potentially speeding its flow. This diagram shows the two types of plumbing.

In the meantime, the high recent rate of ice loss in Greenland, according to other new research, has largely continued.

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