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OnlinePoker

(5,725 posts)
Tue Mar 26, 2019, 10:55 AM Mar 2019

Cold water currently slowing fastest Greenland glacier

NASA research shows that Jakobshavn Glacier, which has been Greenland's fastest-flowing and fastest-thinning glacier for the last 20 years, has made an unexpected about-face. Jakobshavn is now flowing more slowly, thickening, and advancing toward the ocean instead of retreating farther inland. The glacier is still adding to global sea level rise - it continues to lose more ice to the ocean than it gains from snow accumulation - but at a slower rate.

The researchers conclude that the slowdown of this glacier, known in the Greenlandic language as Sermeq Kujalleq, occurred because an ocean current that brings water to the glacier's ocean face grew much cooler in 2016. Water temperatures in the vicinity of the glacier are now colder than they have been since the mid-1980s.

https://sealevel.nasa.gov/news/157/cold-water-currently-slowing-fastest-greenland-glacier

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