Greenland’s vast glaciers are dumping ice into the ocean three times faster than they did 10 years ago because of warming temperatures, suggesting that sea levels could rise even more quickly than current projections.
The study, published today in the journal Science, found that the glaciers contributed 53 cubic miles of water to the Atlantic Ocean in 2005, resulting in about a 0.02-inch rise in sea levels.
“The models we had were not terribly alarming about Greenland,” said Richard Alley, a glaciologist at Penn State University who was not involved in the research. “This paper is a real wake-up call.”
Previous estimates of Greenland’s contribution to sea-level rise were based on tracking the thickness of the glaciers to calculate the amount of ice that had melted and flowed into the ocean.
Researchers estimated that in 1996 total ice lost through melting was about 8.3 cubic miles. Just one-quarter cubic mile of ice would supply the water Los Angeles consumes in a year.
Researchers led by Eric Rignot, a glaciologist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Canada Flintridge, Calif., used satellite imagery to measure another source of water – ice cracking off the ends of glaciers to form icebergs.
The imagery showed that Greenland’s southern glaciers are rapidly accelerating their seaward creep.
The Kangerdlugssuaq glacier in the southeast, after creeping along at just over three miles per year, now moves about 8.7 miles per year.
The increased speed of glacier flow means that far more ice is reaching the ocean.
Greenland’s ice cap is bigger than Texas and nearly two miles thick in places. The researchers calculated that its glaciers deposited 40 cubic miles of ice into the Atlantic Ocean last year, triple the amount during 1996.
As surface ice melts, the water seeps to the underside of the glacier, where it lubricates the ground and exerts an upward force on the ice, accelerating movement of the ice toward the ocean, Rignot said. Sea levels are currently rising at 0.12 inches a year. That would raise the oceans about a foot by the end of the century.
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