Greenland glacier ice growing, which ‘was kind of surprise’ for scientists
A Greenland glacier, which was reportedly the fastest shrinking ice and snow masses on Earth, is growing again, a new NASA study finds.
The Jakobshavn glacier around 2012 was retreating about 1.8 miles and thinning nearly 130 feet annually. But it started growing again at about the same rate in the past two years, according to a study in Monday’s Nature Geoscience.
Of course, the study authors and outside scientists warn that this is temporary.
“At first we didn’t believe it. We had pretty much assumed that Jakobshavn would just keep going on as it had over the last 20 years,” Khazendar said.
Box, who wasn’t part of the study, said Jakobshavn is “arguably the most important Greenland glacier because it discharges the most ice in the northern hemisphere. For all of Greenland, it is king.”
While this is “good news” on a temporary basis, this is bad news on the long term because it tells scientists that ocean temperature is a bigger player in glacier retreats and advances than previously thought, said NASA climate scientist Josh Willis, a study co-author.
“In the long run we’ll probably have to raise our predictions of sea level rise again,” Willis said.
The paper on the new research in Nature Geoscience is titled “Interruption of two decades of Jakobshavn Isbrae acceleration and thinning as regional ocean cools”
Photo from 2012 – note Greenland is still there and the seas haven’t risen…yet
Extent of surface melt over Greenlandâs ice sheet on July 8 (left) and July 12 (right). Measurements from three satellites showed that in just a few days, the melting had dramatically accelerated and an estimated 97 percent of the ice sheet surface had thawed by July 12. (Nicolo E. DiGirolamo, SSAI/NASA GSFC, and Jesse Allen, NASA Earth Observatory)
