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“At First We Didn’t Believe It”: Fast-Melting Greenland Glacier Starts Growing Again In Massive U-Turn

March 29, 2019

“At First We Didn’t Believe It”: Fast-Melting Greenland Glacier Starts Growing Again In Massive U-Turn

A large and fast-melting glacier in Greenland is growing again, according to a new NASA study. The Jakobshavn (YA-cob-shawv-en) glacier on Greenland’s west coast had reportedly been retreating by around 1.8 miles and thinning by nearly 130 feet annually in 2012. May 30, 2012, photo shows an iceberg in or just outside the Ilulissat fjord that likely calved from the Jakobshavn glacier in west Greenland. (Ian Joughin/Associated Press)

According to a study published in Monday’s peer-reviewed Nature Geoscience, however, the glacier began growing at about the same rate over the past two years. That said, the authors of the study swear it’s temporary. 

“At first we didn’t believe it,” said lead author Ala Khazendar who works at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). “We had pretty much assumed that Jakobshavn would just keep going on as it had over the last 20 years.”Jakobshavn glacier (photo: Google Earth)

Co-author Josh Willis said that while this is “good news” on a temporary basis, it’s still “bad news” over the long term because it means that ocean temperatures are a larger factor in the growth and melting of glaciers than previously thought. 

“In the long run we’ll probably have to raise our predictions of sea level rise again,” says Willis, pointing to inevitable doom from man-made global warming. 

“That was kind of a surprise. We kind of got used to a runaway system,” said Jason Box, a Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland ice and climate scientist who was not involved in the study. 

Think of the ocean temperatures near Greenland like an escalator that’s rising slowly from global warming, Khazendar said. But the natural North Atlantic Oscillation sometimes is like jumping down a few steps or jumping up a few steps. The water can get cooler and have effects, but in the long run it is getting warmer and the melting will be worse, he said.

 …click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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