Glacier Draining 4% Of Greenland's Ice Cap Now World's Fastest-Retreating

Scientists have been monitoring what they say may be the fastest moving glacier on the planet. Kangerdlugssuaq Glacier on the east coast of Greenland has been clocked using GPS equipment and satellites to be flowing at a rate of 14km per year. It is also losing mass extremely fast, with its front end retreating 5km back up its fjord this year alone.

The glacier "drains" about 4% of the ice sheet, dumping tens of cubic km of fresh water in the North Atlantic. This gives it significant influence not just on global sea level rise but on the system of ocean circulation which drives through the Arctic. "We've seen a 5km retreat of the terminus, we've see an almost 300% acceleration in the flow speed and we've seen about a 100m thinning of the glacier - all occurring in the last one or so years," said Dr Gordon Hamilton, of the Climate Change Institute at the University of Maine. "These are very dramatic changes." And they are not confined to Kangerdlugssuaq. He was speaking here at the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting.

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The observed recent increase in summer surface melting on the Greenland Ice Sheet is producing large quantities of liquid water which, if it percolates down to the base of the glacier, can lubricate its flow over rocks towards the ocean. And if that same warming is bringing higher-temperature sea waters into contact with the front of Kangerdlugssuaq and Helheim, this could explain their rapid retreat.

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http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4508964.stm

To England and most of Europe as Arctic blasts rake northern Europe as the 'conveyor belt' of warm water flow is interrupted. More at 11.

"The model predictions for sea level rise do not include the effects of rapid changes in ice dynamics," he added.

"We're seeing now that this component might be extremely important. And what it suggests is that the predictions for both the rate and the timing for sea level rise in the next few decades will be largely underestimated."

I wish I had a dollar for every time over the past 5 years that scientists have said yet another aspect of global warming is happening faster than they could have predicted. Even the worst doomsayers, widely derided for their morbid pessimistic view of the future, didn't get it right.

Our species is not up to predicting or understanding the dynamics of what is happening to our planet's climate. And in this game, you don't get an A for effort, only for getting it right.

http://www.flcv.com/green.html

and perma frost melting putting up lots of methane