Measuring seismic waves passing through a glacier suggests that not only is liquid water playing a role in periodic surging but the water is channeled into cracks from across the ice.
glaciers & ice sheets
Posted inNews
Warm Water Is Rapidly Eroding Antarctica’s Ross Ice Shelf
The underside of the world’s largest ice shelf is melting—by meters per year in some places—because of the seasonal inflow of water heated by the Sun, observations of the White Continent reveal.
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Plastic Fragments Found for the First Time on a Glacier
The discovery, made in the Italian Alps, confirms the ubiquity of plastic pollution worldwide.
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Fast-Melting Mountain Glaciers Speed Up Sea Level Rise
Satellites spy on remote alpine glaciers, producing more accurate—and higher—estimates of ice loss over time.
Posted inResearch Spotlights
How Do Intergranular Particles Affect the Flow of Ice?
Laboratory experiments that indicate rock particles can impede sliding along grain boundaries in ice may help researchers more accurately determine the composition of planetary ice masses.
Posted inResearch Spotlights
Decadal Changes in Glacial Discharge in the High Alps
A new statistical analysis of daily, glacial runoff cycles offers a unique way of examining how Alpine glaciers have responded since the onset of rapid regional warming in the 1980s.
Posted inResearch Spotlights
Very Warm Water Observed Along West Antarctic Ice Shelf
Two years of mooring observations at the edge of the continental shelf show that wind stress and upwelling control the inflow of some of the warmest water observed at an ice shelf front in Antarctica.
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Did Global Glaciation Cause the Great Unconformity?
In a new study, researchers make the case that large-scale glaciation during parts of the Neoproterozoic era led to extensive erosion of Earth’s crust.
Posted inResearch Spotlights
Subglacial Water Can Accelerate East Antarctic Glacier Flow
Airborne radar from the Recovery Glacier system demonstrates the importance of characterizing the underlying causes of ice flow speedup to understand how glacial discharge could change in the future.
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Ice Drove Past Indo-Pacific Climate Variance
Researchers used both terrestrial and marine proxy data to reconstruct the dramatic and dynamic climatic changes.