[font face=Serif][font size=5]Glacier beds can get slipperier at higher sliding speeds[/font]

[font size=3] AMES, Iowa – As a glacier’s sliding speed increases, the bed beneath the glacier can grow slipperier, according to laboratory experiments conducted by Iowa State University glaciologists.

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Data collected by the researchers show that resistance to glacier sliding – the drag that the bed exerts on the ice – can decrease in response to increasing sliding speed. This decrease in drag with increasing speed, although predicted by some theoreticians a long as 45 years ago, is the opposite of what is usually assumed in mathematical models of the flow of ice sheets.

These are the first empirical results demonstrating that as ice slides at an increasing speed – perhaps in response to changing weather or climate – the bed can become slipperier, which could promote still faster glacier flow.

The response of glaciers to changing climate is one of the largest potential contributors to sea-level rise. Predicting glacier response to climate change depends on properly characterizing the way a glacier slides over its bed. There has been a half-century debate among theoreticians as to how to do that.

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