New research has found a glacier shifted at the highest speed one has ever traveled in summer 2012 according to a press release Monday.
"We sort of felt like, oh we're done with this glacier for a while, and then it sped up so dramatically," Ian Joughin, a University of Washington senior engineer and lead author of the research told weather.com. "We felt like it was not something we should just ignore and wait until we'd done a whole lot more analysis. We wanted to get the results out there," Joughin told weather.com.
The glacier traveled a rate of over 17 kilometers a year which amounts to 46 meters a day in summer 2012. The ice formation also moved over 10 miles annually or 150 feet daily the press release reported. The rate quadrupled the distance the glacier went during the 1990s.
Scientists discovered the information from satellite images, and conclude that the glacier's ocean, and air temperatures in Greenland over the last 10 years are a direct result of the natural change.
The Jakobshavn glacier as it is named, shifts 2.5 miles a year, the quickest one has ever gone in Greenland, and throughout the world, The speed measures up to quick-moving ones in Antarctica.
Glaciers typically move faster during the summer, and tend to crawl in the winter. Scientists found the glaciers increased speed triple the amount compared to the 1990s the press release reported.
"That may not sound like a lot but that's just from this one glacier and there [are] 200 other glaciers in Greenland," Joughin told weather.com. "So it's a pretty significant contribution actually."
"Warmer sea surface temperatures can reduce the sea ice in the fjord, which could let the glacier calve more icebergs," Joughin told weather.com "Warmer water underneath at the bottom of the ocean could melt more of the base of the ice, and certainly warmer surface temperatures melt more ice on the surface. All of these are potential contributors to the kinds of changes we're seeing," Joughin told weather.com.
