September 27, 2006
1 min read
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The swath of ice covering most of Greenland is melting at an increasing clip. A report in the last issue of Nature finds that between April 2002 and April 2006, the rate at which southern Greenland's ice liquefied jumped by 250 percent--supporting the idea that the Greenland ice sheet responds quickly to slight changes in climate.
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The swath of ice covering most of Greenland is melting at an increasing clip. A report in the last issue of Nature finds that between April 2002 and April 2006, the rate at which southern Greenland's ice liquefied jumped by 250 percent--supporting the idea that the Greenland ice sheet responds quickly to slight changes in climate. Using satellite measurements from NASA's Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment mission, researchers looked at monthly changes in Greenland's total mass to determine how fast the ice was disappearing. If the trend continues, icebergs such as this one, floating down southern Greenland's Jakobshavn fjord after breaking off of a glacier, could become an increasingly common sight.
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