From 1984 to 2015, approximately 71,000 Olympic size swimming pools worth of water were released from the melting Khumbu Glacier in Nepal, which is home to Everest Basecamp. Find out how Himalayan glaciers are changing and the implications for downstream communities in this Image of the Week. Himalayan glaciers supply freshwater Himalayan glaciers supply meltwater for ~800 million people, includin ...[Read More]
Image of the Week – How geometry limits thinning in the interior of the Greenland Ice Sheet
Figure 1: (a) Mass change of the Greenland ice sheet measured by NASA’s GRACE mission in cm/yr water equivalent from January 2003 to December 2013 [Credit: modified from Velicogna et al., 2014]. (b) Dynamic surface elevation change and mass loss along the margin of West Greenland as measured by DEM differencing. The map shows surface elevation change from 1985 to present for 16 outlet glaciers. Circles represent mass change (estimated using 917 kg m-3 as ice density) with circle areas proportional to magnitude of mass change. [Credit: Denis Felikson]
The Greenland ice sheet flows from the interior out to the margins, forming fast flowing, channelized rivers of ice that end in fjords along the coast. Glaciologists call these “outlet glaciers” and a large portion of the mass loss from the Greenland ice sheet is occurring because of changes to these glaciers. The end of the glacier that sits in the fjord is exposed to warm ocean water that can me ...[Read More]