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Glacier Moving Faster and Becoming Thinner

Written by SerenaStargazer
Wednesday, 03 August 2005
The Kangerdlugssuaq glacier in eastern Greenland is crashing into the sea much faster than before. Gordon Hamilton, a glaciologist at the University of Maine in Oroni, measured the glacier’s flow from aboard the Greenpeace ship Arctic Sunrise in July 2005, and found that it is flowing into the sea at 1.6 meters per hour. This is three times as fast as when it was measured in 1988. The glacier is becoming thinner as well. While many glaciers have periodic surges, it is unusual for glaciers to flow faster and become thinner at the same time. David Vaughan of the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge, UK says that this suggests that melting ice is lubricating the rock beneath the glacier and reducing friction, which is causing the glacier to speed up.

Kangerdlugssuaq is moving almost as fast as the world’s fastest glacier, west Greenland’s Jakobshavn Isbrae. Between them, the two glaciers drain 10 percent of Greenland’s ice sheet, which hold enough ice to raise sea levels by seven meters. Unless the melting ice is replaced by greater snowfall inland, which does not seem likely, sea levels worldwide will rise.

 
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