Speed Of Greenland's Kangerdlugssuaq Glacier Up 300% In One Year

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That's the speed that Gordon Hamilton and Leigh Sterns of the Climate Change Institute at the University of Maine calculated that the Kangerdlugssuaq Glacier is traveling. Studies conducted last year by the two scientists of the 30 mile by five mile Greenland glacier, revealed a speed far exceeding expectations. The team spoke of their findings Monday evening at Cape Cod Community College. Earlier that day they sat down over coffee to speak in detail of their discovery and its implications.

"We've been doing this project using satellite images for a few years," said Hamilton. "We certainly expected changes. We knew the part of Greenland where we went was changing." Satellite images of the NASA-funded study showed changes in the glacier along the interior but not along the coast. The five-week expedition to Greenland aboard the Greenpeace ship Arctic Sunrise was done to validate those studies and the puzzling coastal phenomenon that proved to be false.

"When we got there we saw some very large changes along the coast," Hamilton said, noting that the glacier had receded five kilometers along the coast. "And it was moving 300 percent faster than it was last year," Sterns said of the half-mile to one-mile thick ice floe moving from the middle of the ice sheet to the ocean. She said that even the previous three-mile rate of speed was faster than usual. Both the recession along the coast and the speed of ice flow are indications of global warming.

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"Things are changing even faster than we thought possible a few years ago. The sea level is rising now an inch and a half in 10 years," Hamilton said, noting that melting snow and ice in mountain ranges such as the Andes and Alps are contributing to the increase. "Part of it is from the warming of the ocean. As the ocean gets warmer, it expands. Some of the increase also comes from melting ice sheets. But we don't know how much. On Cape Cod, an inch and a half rise in the water could mean that our fresh water aquifers would mix with salt water and no longer be drinkable. It would also mean an increase in the impact from storm surges.

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