Greenland’s Glaciers Losing Ice Faster than Last Year’s Record Rate of Loss
18.12.2008 - Water & Oceans, Land & Geology, Ice & Snow, Other, Arctic
Ohio State researchers monitoring the loss of ice from Greenland's outlet glaciers report that the amount of ice lost during the summer of 2008 is nearly three times the area lost during thesummer of 2007, which already was a record in itself. The boreal summer of 2007 saw the GreenlandIce Sheet lose 62.9 km2, while this past boreal summer saw a loss of 183.8km2. Much of the additional loss came from the Petermann Glacier in Northern Greenland, which lost 29 km2 of its area this past summer.
"We now know that the climate doesn't have to warm any more for Greenland to continue losing ice," said Dr. Jason Box, a researcher with Ohio State's Byrd Polar Research Center,noting that Greenland has been deglaciating for the past 50 years and that "it has probably passed the point where it could maintain the mass of ice that we remember."
Dr. Box, along with Ohio Stategraduate students Russell Benson and David Becker presented their research findings at the annual fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco. The research team has been using MODIS images aboard two NASA satellites to determine how much ice flows from landlocked glaciers in Greenland to the ocean to form floating ice shelves.
Dr. Boxadded that snowfall rates have increased in Northern Greenland of late, but it hasn't been enough to compensate for theincrease in the ice melt rate. However according to Dr. Box this rate of loss doesn't mean that all of Greenland's Ice Sheet will disappear; it will likely reach a new equilibrium state, but not before it loses a lot more ice.
