A new study published in Nature unveils a surprising discovery: a substantial amount of meltwater is temporarily stored within the Greenland Ice Sheet during summer months.
A new study published in Nature unveils a surprising discovery: a substantial amount of meltwater is temporarily stored within the Greenland Ice Sheet during summer months. For the first time, an international group of researchers was able to quantify meltwater with positioning data. The finding challenges current models of how ice sheets contribute to global sea level rise.
The Greenland Ice Sheet is currently the largest single contributor to global sea-level rise, with the potential to raise the mean sea level by up to seven meters if it fully melts. While scientists have long studied the melt processes of the ice sheet, one crucial question has remained unanswered: how does meltwater storage evolve within the ice sheet throughout the summer melt season? A new approach provides an unprecedented view into the movement and storage of meltwater.
"During the melt season, we found that a significant fraction of meltwater mass is stored temporarily within the ice sheet," says Jiangjun Ran, associate professor at Southern University of Science and Technology. "This water buffering effect peaks in July and slowly recedes in the following weeks."
Read more at Delft University of Technology
Image: GNET station “TREO” in southeast Greenland. Credit: Thomas Nylen (Credit: Technical University of Denmark, DTU)
