Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

Solid Earth

Heating glaciers from below

Nature Geoscience volume 6, pages 683–684 (2013)Cite this article

Subjects

Climate change is affecting the cryosphere from above. Geothermal heat flux from below is also contributing to conditions at the base of Greenland's ice sheet, which sits atop a lithosphere of variable thickness.

The heat that has been slowly escaping the Earth's interior since its formation 4.55 billion years ago is the motor that drives the tectonic plates1. But cooling the Earth's interior is a slow process; for the purposes of studying relatively fast processes at the Earth's surface, such as changes to the cryosphere over glacial cycles, the geothermal heat flux across the surface is often assumed to be unchanging. Thick ice sheets, however, are not only sensitive to temperature fluctuations from above, but also to heating from below, from the Earth's interior. Determining the geothermal heat flux manually — by drilling a hole into the Earth and measuring the local temperature gradient — is challenging beneath kilometres of ice. Thus, the heat flux beneath ice sheets remains poorly constrained2. Writing in Nature Geoscience, Petrunin and colleagues3 use a coupled lithosphere–glacier model calibrated with temperature measurements from drill holes within the Greenland ice shield to show that the geothermal heat flux is strongly spatially variable across central Greenland.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Rent or buy this article

Prices vary by article type

from$1.95

to$39.95

Learn more

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Figure 1: Varying heat below glaciers.

References

  1. Jaupart, C. & Mareschal, J-C. Heat Generation and Transport in the Earth (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2010).

    Book  Google Scholar 

  2. Davies, J. H. & Davies D. R. Solid Earth 1, 5–24 (2010).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Petrunin, A. G. et al. Nature Geosci. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ngeo1898 (2013).

  4. Fowler, C. M. R. The Solid Earth 2nd edn (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2004).

    Book  Google Scholar 

  5. Rogozhina . et al. J. Geophys. Res. 117, F02025 (2012).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Fahnestock, M., Abdalati, W., Joughin, I., Brozena, J. & Gogineni, P. Science 294, 2338–2342 (2001).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Pollard, D., DeConto, R. M. & Nyblade, A. A. Glob. Planet. Change 49, 63–74 (2005).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Burov, E. B. in Treatise on Geophysics—Crust and Lithosphere Dynamics Vol. 6 (eds Schubert, G. & Watts, A. B.) 99–151 (2007).

    Book  Google Scholar 

  9. Kerr, R. A. Science 340, 1283–1285 (2013).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Lawver, L. A. & Müller, R. D. Geology 22, 311 (1994).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Amante, C. & Eakins, B. W. NOAA Technical Memorandum NESDIS NGDC-24 (National Geophysical Data Center, 2009).

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Boris J. P. Kaus is in the Institute of Geosciences at the Johannes-Gutenberg University, J.J.-Becherweg 21, 55128 Mainz, Germany,

    Boris J. P. Kaus

Authors
  1. Boris J. P. Kaus
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Boris J. P. Kaus.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and Permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Kaus, B. Heating glaciers from below. Nature Geosci 6, 683–684 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo1919

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo1919

This article is cited by

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing