Lakes forming next to Greenland's melting ice sheet are speeding up glacier flow
Posted by Portalrules123@reddit | collapse | View on Reddit | 3 comments
Anxious_Gift_7125@reddit
So life gets better and better for humans. Lowest ever warfare deaths. Lowest infant mortality. Absolute poverty rates down.
Yet no one asked about what it took from the planet
StatementBot@reddit
The following submission statement was provided by /u/Portalrules123:
SS: Related to climate and cryosphere collapse as, apart from accelerating global warming causing glaciers to melt faster, the formation of new “ice marginal” lakes next to glaciers on the Greenlandic ice sheet are causing a further acceleration in glacier melting in yet another example of a positive feedback loop. As these lakes form, researchers from the University of Leeds found that the speed of the glacier flow into them was over three times faster than for glaciers that end on land, showing that their presence destabilizes not only the part of the ice sheet that directly touches them but a fair amount of distance inland. As the glacier melt accelerates, more and more lakes form thereby causing further acceleration, a classic positive feedback loop. Greenland has already been losing 264 gigatons of ice a year on average since 2002, and this number is only going to skyrocket along with rising sea levels when the water from the ice sheet reaches the ocean. Expect Greenland to fully melt away by the time global warming takes full effect….and even if that takes hundreds of years that is startlingly fast in geological time.
Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/1sdax9e/lakes_forming_next_to_greenlands_melting_ice/oeh7dne/
Portalrules123@reddit (OP)
SS: Related to climate and cryosphere collapse as, apart from accelerating global warming causing glaciers to melt faster, the formation of new “ice marginal” lakes next to glaciers on the Greenlandic ice sheet are causing a further acceleration in glacier melting in yet another example of a positive feedback loop. As these lakes form, researchers from the University of Leeds found that the speed of the glacier flow into them was over three times faster than for glaciers that end on land, showing that their presence destabilizes not only the part of the ice sheet that directly touches them but a fair amount of distance inland. As the glacier melt accelerates, more and more lakes form thereby causing further acceleration, a classic positive feedback loop. Greenland has already been losing 264 gigatons of ice a year on average since 2002, and this number is only going to skyrocket along with rising sea levels when the water from the ice sheet reaches the ocean. Expect Greenland to fully melt away by the time global warming takes full effect….and even if that takes hundreds of years that is startlingly fast in geological time.