One of the world’s coldest places looks to be losing its capacity to maintain the freezing environment required to keep the rest of the world’s temperatures stable.
According to Eric Rignot, professor of system science at the University of California, Irvine, and research author, the ocean has played a “important role” in the development of glaciers during the previous 10 to 20 years of constant global warming.
According to a research published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, melting along the interface between ice sheets and the ocean in the Arctic is significantly more widespread than previously believed.
According to the report, what is occurring at the grounding line – the connection between a grounded ice sheet and the ocean – caused the researchers to detect far greater melting than previously anticipated at Greenland’s Petermann Glacier.
The researchers used satellite measurements of ice sheet mobility and surface elevation data to estimate grounding line movement and basal melt rates for glaciers since 1992.
According to the study, the retreating grounding line formed a cavity under the center of the ice sheet of about 20 square kilometers in size and remained open throughout the tidal cycle in 2022, made possible by additional satellite imagery available over the last decade.
