Skip to main content

Home/ Climate Change Impacts Inventory/ Group items tagged Greenland

Rss Feed Group items tagged

Filter: All | Bookmarks | Topics Simple Middle
Hunter Cutting

Key Greenland glacier retreats in July - 0 views

voices.washingtonpost.com/..._eyeballs_glacial_melt_in.html

glacier glacial retreat ice loss Greenland climate change impact

shared by Hunter Cutting on 14 Jul 10 - Cached
  • The Jakobshavn Isbrae glacier, one of the largest glaciers in Greenland, swiftly lost a 2.7-square mile chunk of ice between July 6 and 7, NASA announced late last week. The ice loss pushed the point where the glacier meets the ocean, known as the "calving front," nearly one mile farther inland in a single day. According to the space agency, the new calving front location is the farthest inland on record.
  • The Jakobshavn Isbrae is what is known as an outlet glacier, which the National Snow and Ice Data Center defines as "a valley glacier which drains an inland ice sheet or ice cap and flows through a gap in peripheral mountains." In other words, it serves as a drainage pipe from the land ice into the ocean. According to NASA, the Jakobshavn Isbrae, which is located in western Greenland at about 69 degrees north latitude, is the largest outlet glacier in Greenland, draining 6.5 percent of Greenland's ice sheet area.
  • NASA reports that "as much as 10 percent of all ice lost from Greenland is coming through Jakobshavn, which is also believed to be the single largest contributor to sea level rise in the northern hemisphere."
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Interestingly, this particular glacier has been retreating especially rapidly in recent years. As the below image shows, the ice front receded more 27 miles in 160 years, but in recent years the ice loss rate has increased, with six miles of retreat observed in just the past decade.
Hunter Cutting

Greenland glacier calves island 4 times the size of Manhattan - 0 views

www.udel.edu/...greenland080610.html

climate change impact ice sheet ice melt Greenland calving

shared by Hunter Cutting on 06 Aug 10 - Cached
  • Greenland glacier calves island 4 times the size of Manhattan
  • A University of Delaware researcher reports that an “ice island” four times the size of Manhattan has calved from Greenland's Petermann Glacier. The last time the Arctic lost such a large chunk of ice was in 1962.
  • “In the early morning hours of August 5, 2010, an ice island four times the size of Manhattan was born in northern Greenland,” said Andreas Muenchow, associate professor of physical ocean science and engineering at the University of Delaware's College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Satellite imagery of this remote area at 81 degrees N latitude and 61 degrees W longitude, about 620 miles [1,000 km] south of the North Pole, reveals that Petermann Glacier lost about one-quarter of its 43-mile long [70 km] floating ice-shel
  • The new ice island has an area of at least 100 square miles and a thickness up to half the height of the Empire State Building. “The freshwater stored in this ice island could keep the Delaware or Hudson rivers flowing for more than two years. It could also keep all U.S. public tap water
  • The last time such a massive ice island formed was in 1962 when Ward Hunt Ice Shelf calved a 230 square-mile island, smaller pieces of which became lodged between real islands inside Nares Strait. Petermann Glacier spawned smaller ice islands in 2001 (34 square miles) and 2008 (10 square miles). In 2005, the Ayles Ice Shelf disintegrated and became an ice island (34 square miles) about 60 miles to the west of Petermann Fjord.
Hunter Cutting

Numerous meltwater lakes forming in Greenland - 0 views

hot-topic.co.nz/its-grim-up-north-2

Arctic Greenland ice sheet ice melt

shared by Hunter Cutting on 14 Jun 10 - Cached
  • From NASA’s eyes in the sky, this is a view of the west coast of Greenland downloaded earlier today, looking down on the Ilulissat Icefjord — the outlet for the Jakobshavn Isbrae, the biggest outlet glacier in Greenland and the largest in the northern hemisphere.
  • I’m posting it to show the numerous large lakes of glacial meltwater that have appeared on top of the ice sheet over recent weeks. At the edge of the ice sheet, the winter snow has melted revealing the greyer ice underneath, but as you climb up the ice away from the coast you get back up into unmelted snow (bottom right). And there are lakes like this a very long way up the west coast, all primed to deliver their water down through moulins to the base of the sheet and thence out to sea, or over the surface in glacial rivers.
Hunter Cutting

Greenland land mass rising as ice sheet melts - 0 views

www.upi.com/...UPI-46691274215832

climate change impact Greenland ice melt land rise sea level rise

shared by Hunter Cutting on 19 May 10 - Cached
  • Greenland's ice is melting so quickly the land underneath is rising at an accelerated pace. Researchers said some coastal areas are rising by nearly 1 inch per year
  • "It's been known for several years that climate change is contributing to the melting of Greenland's ice sheet," Professor Tim Dixon, who led the study, said. "What's surprising, and a bit worrisome, is the ice is melting so fast that we can actually see the land uplift in response. Even more surprising, the rise seems to be accelerating, implying melting is accelerating."
Hunter Cutting

Greenland rapidly rising as ice melt continues: Science Daily - 0 views

www.sciencedaily.com/...100518170218.htm

climate change impact Greenland ice melt land rise sea level rise

shared by Hunter Cutting on 04 Jun 10 - Cached
  • Greenland's ice is melting so quickly that the land underneath is rising at an accelerated pace.
  • "What's surprising, and a bit worrisome, is that the ice is melting so fast that we can actually see the land uplift in response," he says. "Even more surprising, the rise seems to be accelerating, implying that melting is accelerating."
Hunter Cutting

Arctic sea ice at record low for June - 0 views

nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews

Arctic sea ice Arctic climate change impact

shared by Hunter Cutting on 01 Jul 10 - Cached
  • Average June ice extent was the lowest in the satellite data record, from 1979 to 2010. Arctic air temperatures were higher than normal, and Arctic sea ice continued to decline at a fast pace. June saw the return of the Arctic dipole anomaly, an atmospheric pressure pattern that contributed to the record sea ice loss in 2007.
  • At the end of May 2010, daily ice extent fell below the previous record low for May, recorded in 2006, and during June continued to track at record low levels
  • The linear rate of monthly decline for June over the 1979 to 2010 period is now 3.5% per decade. This year’s daily June rate of decline was the fastest in the satellite record; the previous record for the fastest rate of June decline was set in 1999
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Ron Kwok of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) reports that Nares Strait, the narrow passageway between northwest Greenland and Ellesmere Island is clear of the ice “arch" that usually plugs southward transport of the old, thick ice in the Lincoln Sea. Typically the ice arch forms in winter and breaks up in early July. This year the arch formed around March 15th and lasted only 56 days, breaking up in May. In 2007 the ice arch did not form at all, allowing twice as much export through Nares Strait than the annual mean. Although the export of sea ice out of the Arctic Ocean through Nares Strait is very small in comparison to the export through Fram Strait, the Lincoln Sea contains some of the Arctic’s thickest ice.
1 - 6 of 6
Showing 20▼ items per page