image: Floating extension of Nioghalvfjerdsfjorden glacier looking north with the transition to flotation in the foreground acquired during NASA Operation IceBridge mission deployed in Greenland in Spring 2015. view more
Credit: Image credit: John G. Sonntag (NASA, Greenbelt, MD).
A study of the Zachariae Isstrøm and Nioghalvfjerdsfjorden glaciers in Greenland, which hold an amount of ice equivalent to a 1.1 m global sea level rise, finds that the ice shelf collapse and rapid mass loss of the Zachariae Isstrøm glacier that began in 2012, which occurred even as the Nioghalvfjerdsfjorden glacier within the same climate has been relatively stable, may be attributable to subsurface ocean water, which has warmed by 1.3 °C since 1979, reaching the grounding line, or seafloor-glacier-water interface, in the former glacier but not in the latter, as simulated by ice-ocean interaction modeling.
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Article #20-15483: "Ocean melting of the Zachariae Isstrøm and Nioghalvfjerdsfjorden glaciers, northeast Greenland," by Lu An et al.
MEDIA CONTACT: Eric Rignot, University of California, Irvine, CA; tel: 949-824-3739, 818-653-2531; e-mail: <erignot@uci.edu>
Journal
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences