Retreating calving front of the Jacobshavn Isbrae glacier in Greenland from 1851 – 2006. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A new study has some reassuring news.

Greenland’s glaciers hold  water to raise sea level by 20 feet, and they are melting as the planet warms, so there’s a lot to worry.

A few years ago, the Jakobshavn glacier in Greenland was in news all over.   The slow-moving stream of ice suddenly doubled its speed. It started dumping a whole lot more ice into the Atlantic. Other glaciers also sped up.The big concern was that If the world’s big glaciers were on their way to a 10-fold speedup, that could lead to a staggering 6 feet of sea level rise by the end of this century.

So Joughin and team have been trying to see if that acceleration is under way.

They studied radar images of 200 Greenland glaciers gathered over the past decade. Graduate student Twila Moon says some of Greenland’s glaciers picked up the pace and started surging forward more than 5 miles in a year.

It turned out that glacial pace isn’t very slow. she says.

It also turned out that glacial pace isn’t consistent. The glaciers like Jakobshavn that started surging haven’t kept on picking up speed. In fact, some have slowed down. And glacier speeds vary dramatical

read more  here

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