University of Alaska Fairbanks scientists will make several trips to Greenland over two years to study how meltwater and the ocean affect glacial ice loss. The four-year research project, funded by a $565,000 National Science Foundation grant, will create a traveling museum exhibit about the drivers of Arctic climate change. The exhibit will appear first […]
Findings raise new questions about climate dynamics During the last ice age, massive icebergs periodically broke off from an ice sheet covering a large swath of North America and discharged rapidly melting ice into the North Atlantic Ocean around Greenland, triggering abrupt climate change impacts across the globe. These sudden episodes, called Heinrich events, occurred […]
The way that the Petermann Glacier in Northwest Greenland is melting indicates that current models are too conservative. A glacier in the north of Greenland is melting faster and in a different way than scientists previously thought, and this has troubling implications for the future speed of global sea-level rise. The new discovery was published in the Proceedings […]
“This is unprecedented,” said one climate scientist. This past weekend, researchers at the National Science Foundation’s Summit Station observed rainfall at the peak of Greenland’s rapidly melting ice sheet for the first time on record—an event driven by warming temperatures. “This was the third time in less than a decade, and the latest date in the year on […]