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Letter

Nature Geoscience 1, 827–831 (1 December 2008) | doi:10.1038/ngeo356

Increased flow speed on a large East Antarctic outlet glacier caused by subglacial floods

Leigh A. Stearns , Benjamin E. Smith & Gordon S. Hamilton

Changes in the velocity of large outlet glaciers and ice streams in Greenland and Antarctica are important for ice-sheet mass balance and hence sea level. Mass loss in large parts of both ice sheets is being driven by the recent accelerations of outlet glaciers in response to unknown or poorly constrained climatic or internal perturbations in their boundary conditions.