Satellite observations made during the International Polar Year 2008–09 have yielded a near-complete map of ice motion in Greenland.

Eric Rignot and Jeremie Mouginot of the University of California, Irvine, combined radar data from three satellites to map the velocities of the island's largest glaciers at high resolution. The speed at which Greenland's glaciers are moving towards the coast ranges from just a few centimetres per year to 13 kilometres per year for the fastest-moving ice stream, Jakobshavn Isbræ. Glaciers in areas with high annual precipitation are generally moving faster than those in Greenland's dry and cold north.

The map provides a new constraint for ice-sheet models, the authors say.

Geophys. Res. Lett. http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2012GL051634 (2012)