Greenland's Fastest Glacier Sets New Speed Record

vinces99 writes "The latest observations of Jakobshavn Glacier show that Greenland's largest glacier is moving ice from land into the ocean at a speed that appears to be the fastest ever recorded. Researchers from the University of Washington and the German Space Agency measured the speed of the glacier in 2012 and 2013. The results were published Feb. 3 in The Cryosphere, an open access journal of the European Geosciences Union. Jakobshavn Glacier, which is widely believed to be the glacier that produced the large iceberg that sank the Titanic in 1912, drains the Greenland ice sheet into a deep-ocean fjord on the west coast of the island. This speedup of Jakobshavn means that the glacier is adding more and more ice to the ocean, contributing to sea-level rise. 'We are now seeing summer speeds more than four times what they were in the 1990s, on a glacier which at that time was believed to be one of the fastest, if not the fastest, glacier in Greenland,' said lead author Ian Joughin, a glaciologist at the UW's Polar Science Center. The new observations show that in summer of 2012 the glacier reached a record speed of more than 10 miles (17 km) per year, or more than 150 feet (46 m) per day. These appear to be the fastest flow rates recorded for any glacier or ice stream in Greenland or Antarctica, researchers said."

More snow = more pressure = faster calving!

[RocketRabbit]

Greenland has experienced (like Antarctica) some very heavy snowfalls in the past few years, which increases the thickness of the glaciers. Glacial flow is fairly well understood, as the glacier gets thicker it causes faster movement.

The calving of large glaciers is often touted by alarmists as proof of their claims, but this phenomenon does not actually support the alarmist position at all.

Kill all humans

[musmax]

You know I don't really care about the number of humans the impeding environmental crisis will kill off, the more the better, as long as its not me of course, and it will take at least 50 years, by which time I will be dragged to my grave by my fat ass. In all probability it will be some brown nobody that cooks his food over a dung fire in Asstonia, and who gives a fuck about that ? What concerns me more is the sterile wasteland the survivors will create. I mean its nice to "conserve" some splatter of greenery somewhere out of town siting in front of your TV in your underpants, drinking craft beer, but I'll wager not much will stop you bulldozing that shit down to feed your starving kids.