In just five years, 930 million cubic meters of crevasses opened up in the Greenland ice sheet, equivalent to adding a crack the size of the Great Pyramid of Giza to the world’s second largest ice sheet every few days.
In just five years, 930 million cubic meters of crevasses opened up in the Greenland ice sheet, equivalent to adding a crack the size of the Great Pyramid of Giza to the world’s second largest ice sheet every few days.
The increased crevassing, especially prominent in fast-flowing portions of the ice sheet, could lead to a feedback loop that accelerates ice loss from the glacier, which ultimately raises sea levels. Greenland’s ice melt has added 0.4 inches to sea levels since 1992 and is estimated to add another foot by the end of the century.
These findings come from a new study of Greenland between 2016 and 2021 by researchers at the University of Florida, Durham University in the United Kingdom, and other institutions. It is the first ice-sheet-scale analysis of the glacier’s crevasses conducted over multiple years, which allowed scientists to see how crevasses changed over relatively short time periods.
Analyzing crevasse behavior across the entire Greenland ice sheet required new approaches.
Read more at University of Florida
Image: Crevasses at Store Glacier, a marine-terminating outlet glacier of the western Greenland Ice Sheet. (Credit: Tom Chudley (Durham University))
