Greenland glaciers lose Lake Erie-worth of water
according to a new study.
The study, carried out by a team of US and Dutch scientists and published in Geophysical Research Letters, combined data from several satellites and aeroplanes, as well as data from other sources, to calculate the mass balances of Greenland’s Helheim, Kangerdlugssuaq and Jakobshavn glaciers over the past decade. Between them, these three glaciers are responsible for about one fifth of the ice flowing from Greenland into the ocean.
They found that over the study period, Jakobshavn had lost 11 years’ worth of normal snow accumulation, about 300 billion tonnes of ice. ‘Kangerdlugssuaq would have to stop flowing and accumulate snowfall for seven years to regain the ice it has lost,’ said one of the study’s authors, Ian Howat of Ohio State University. Perhaps surprisingly, Helheim gained a small amount of mass over the study period – about one 15th of the ice lost by Jakobshavn.
The researchers now plan to build up a more detailed picture of ice loss on Greenland glaciers by looking at some of the island’s smaller glaciers and refining their data. ‘Currently, the missing piece is ice thickness data for all of the glaciers, but a NASA aircraft is up there getting it. When that’s available, we’ll be able to apply this technique to the entire Greenland ice sheet and get a monthly total mass balance for the past ten years or so,’ Howat said.
July 2011
The study, carried out by a team of US and Dutch scientists and published in Geophysical Research Letters, combined data from several satellites and aeroplanes, as well as data from other sources, to calculate the mass balances of Greenland’s Helheim, Kangerdlugssuaq and Jakobshavn glaciers over the past decade. Between them, these three glaciers are responsible for about one fifth of the ice flowing from Greenland into the ocean.
They found that over the study period, Jakobshavn had lost 11 years’ worth of normal snow accumulation, about 300 billion tonnes of ice. ‘Kangerdlugssuaq would have to stop flowing and accumulate snowfall for seven years to regain the ice it has lost,’ said one of the study’s authors, Ian Howat of Ohio State University. Perhaps surprisingly, Helheim gained a small amount of mass over the study period – about one 15th of the ice lost by Jakobshavn.
The researchers now plan to build up a more detailed picture of ice loss on Greenland glaciers by looking at some of the island’s smaller glaciers and refining their data. ‘Currently, the missing piece is ice thickness data for all of the glaciers, but a NASA aircraft is up there getting it. When that’s available, we’ll be able to apply this technique to the entire Greenland ice sheet and get a monthly total mass balance for the past ten years or so,’ Howat said.
July 2011
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