Fundamental Change In Nature Of Greenland Ice Sheet - Impervious Ice Grew To Size Of WV In 13 Years

“We have never observed an ice sheet behaving this way before. It’s unprecedented in human scientific history.” - Kristin Poinar, Glaciologist, University of Buffalo

Greenland is, for the most part, a very moist environment (with the exception of northern Greenland which until recently had been a dry environment).

The ice sheet works like a sponge absorbing the meltwater of Summer. Now the shaved ice cone has turned into a popsicle. Massive ice slabs have formed that prevents percolation into the slushy layers know as firn. This process is worsening runoff into the sea (as well as a lack of reflectivity of solar heat back to space).

Madeleine Stone writes in National Geographic:

When the remnants of Europe’s second summertime heatwave migrated over Greenland in late July, more than half of the ice sheet’s surface started melting for the first time since 2012. A study published Wednesday in Nature shows that mega-melts like that one, which is being amplified by climate change, aren’t just causing Greenland to shed billions of tonnes of ice. They’re causing the remaining ice to become denser.

“Ice slabs”—solid planks of ice that can span hundreds of square miles and grow to be 15 metres thick—are spreading across the porous, air pocket-filled surface of the Greenland ice sheet as it melts and refreezes more often. From 2001 to 2014, the slabs expanded in area by about 64,750 square kilometres, forming an impermeable barrier the size of West Virginia that prevents meltwater from trickling down through the ice. Instead, the meltwater becomes runoff that flows overland, eventually making its way out to sea.

Link to tweet

As the ice slabs continue to spread, the study’s authors predict more and more of Greenland’s surface will become a “runoff zone,” boosting the ice sheet’s contribution to global sea level rise and, perhaps, causing unexpected changes. “We're watching an ice sheet rapidly transform its state in front of our eyes, which is terrifying,” says lead study author Mike MacFerrin, a glaciologist at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

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https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/10/8/1886919/--Like-ice-cream-sliding-off-a-piece-of-cake-Greenland-ice-cap-melts-in-a-new-and-disturbing-way?utm_campaign=trending