Last January, a study in Nature Climate Change showed the world's glaciers are the smallest they've been in human history, revealing radiocarbon material that hasn't been exposed for 40,000 years. Now,
Could the oil crisis be triggered by images of Greenland's crumbling ice cap? Project Syndicate
Continuous Global Positioning System observations reveal rapid and large ice velocity fluctuations in the western ablation zone of the Greenland Ice Sheet. Within days, ice velocity reacts to increased meltwater production and increases by a factor of 4. Such a response is much stronger and much faster than previously reported. Over a longer period of 17 years, annual ice velocities have decreased slightly, which suggests that the englacial hydraulic system adjusts constantly to the variable meltwater input, which results in a more or less constant ice flux over the years.
The accelerating pace of climate warming in the earth
New data from Greenland shows that the UN's dire warnings on global warming may be vastly understated-------
The response of the Greenland ice sheet to global warming is a source of concern notably because of its potential contribution to changes in the sea level. We demonstrated the natural vulnerability of the ice sheet by using pollen records from marine sediment off southwest Greenland that indicate important changes of the vegetation in Greenland over the past million years.
Pollen data suggest that the Greenland ice sheet was much smaller during previous warm periods.
Five Arctic coastal nations agreed on Wednesday to let the UN rule on conflicting territorial claims on the region's seabed, which may hold up to one fourth of the world's undiscovered hydrocarbon reserves. "We affirmed our commitment to the orderly settlement of any possible overlapping claims," US Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte told a news conference. Ministers from Canada, Denmark, Norway, Russia and the United States met in Greenland for a two-day summit to discuss sovereignty over the Arctic Ocean seabed.
Officials from five Arctic coastal countries will meet in Greenland this week to discuss how to carve up the Arctic Ocean, which could hold up to one-quarter of the world's undiscovered oil and gas reserves. Canada, Denmark, Norway, Russia and the United States are squabbling over much of the Arctic seabed and Denmark has called them together for talks in its self-governing province to avert a free-for-all for the region's resources.
It has been widely hypothesized that a warmer climate in Greenland would increase the volume of lubricating surface meltwater reaching the ice-bedrock interface, accelerating ice flow and increasing mass loss. We have assembled a data set that provides a synoptic-scale view, spanning ice-sheet to outlet-glacier flow, with which to evaluate this hypothesis.
Subglacial water can significantly affect the velocity of ice streams and outlet glaciers of ice sheets. Depending on the geometry and capacity of the subglacial hydrologic system, increased surface melting in Greenland over the coming decades may influence the ice sheet's mass balance. Furthermore, subglacial lakes in Antarctica can modulate ice velocities and act as nucleation points for new fast-flowing ice streams.
