Category: Arctic

The Greenland Ice Sheet covers roughly 1.7 million square kilometers in the Arctic. If the ice sheet melts entirely, global sea level would rise about 7 meters, but scientists don’t know how quickly it could melt. 

A team of international researchers monitoring the impact of climate change on large rivers in Arctic Canada and Alaska have determined that, as the region is sharply warming up, its rivers are not moving as scientists have expected. 

A team of international researchers has shown for the first time how 18 meltwater lakes in Greenland collapse during winter, causing the edges of the ice to flow faster. This new knowledge is essential for understanding how climate change influences the flow of ice masses in the Arctic. 

New research from the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland and University of Copenhagen shows that meltwater in tunnels beneath Greenland’s ice sheet causes it to change speed, and in some places, accelerate greatly towards the ocean. This can cause an increase in melting, especially in a warming climate.

A new study has found that the movement of glaciers in Greenland is more complex than previously thought. The team led by researchers from the University of Cambridge used computer modeling techniques based on earlier fiber-optic measurements from the Greenland Ice Sheet. 

Every year, the transfer of carbon-rich particles across the shelf in the Kara and Barents Seas could trap as much as 3.6 million metric tons of CO2 in the deep Arctic ocean for thousands of years. 

Current predictions of ice melt in the Arctic are undoubtedly way off. According to a new study, glaciers in the icy north could be slipping into the sea up to 100 times faster than previously thought. 

Scientists now know that major ice streams can shut down, shifting rapid ice transport to other parts of the ice sheet, within a few thousand years. This was found in reconstructions of two ice streams, based on ice-penetrating radar scans of the Greenland ice sheet by a team led by the Alfred Wegener Institute. 

Mars was once supposedly almost another Earth, with flowing water that froze into massive mountains of ice. 

During spring and summer, as the air warms up and the sun shines down on the Greenland Ice Sheet, melt ponds form. Melt ponds are extensive pools of open water that form on both sea ice and ice sheets and are visible from space.