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Trapped meltwater affects mass loss of Greenland ice sheet

An analysis suggests that ice geometry and flow speeds control how meltwater affects the slipperiness of the bed beneath the Greenland ice sheet. Changes in these conditions could therefore influence future ice-mass loss.
  1. Stephen J. Livingstone

    1. Stephen J. Livingstone is in the Department of Geography, University of Sheffield, Sheffield S10 2TN, UK.

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The melting of the vast sheet of ice covering Greenland is one of the largest contributors to global sea-level rise1. A key uncertainty in predicting how much of this ice sheet will be lost as a result of future climate change is how the meltwater affects the speed at which the ice flows towards the ocean. Meltwater under ice sheets causes fluctuations in this speed on a timescale of hours to decades2, but it remains unclear whether this is merely noise, or whether this meltwater actually controls the loss of ice-sheet mass over longer timescales. Writing in Nature, Maier et al.3 report that meltwater moving from the surface to the base of the Greenland ice sheet has caused pronounced and lasting changes in the slipperiness of the bed. The results imply that meltwater can drive large, long-term changes in ice flow speed.

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Nature 607, 659-660 (2022)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-01986-4

References

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Competing Interests

The author declares no competing interests.

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