Our image of the week shows the area around the calving front of Petermann Glacier through the spring, summer, and autumn of 2016. Petermann Glacier, in northern Greenland, is one of the largest glaciers of the Greenland Ice Sheet. It terminates in the huge Petermann Fjord, more than 10 km wide, surrounded by 1000 m cliffs and plunging to more than 1100 m below sea level at its deepest point. In 2 ...[Read More]
Image of the week – Learning from our past!
Figure 1: Peak global mean temperature, atmospheric CO2, maximum global mean sea level (GMSL) and source(s) of meltwater over the past 3 million years. The light blue area on each bar indicates the uncertainty associated with the maximum global mean sea level , and the pie charts denote the fraction (not location) of ice retreat in Greenland and Antarctica [Credit: Dutton et al. (2015)].
Understanding the climate evolution of our planet is not an easy task, but it is essential to understand the past if we are to predict the future! Historic climate cycles provide us with a glimpse into a period of time when the Earth was warmer than it was today. Our image of the week looks at these warmer periods of time to see what they can tell us about the future! For example, during the Plioc ...[Read More]
Image of The Week – The Pulsating Ice Sheet!
Figure 1: (a) Ice sheet at its most advanced state, the terminus is grounded 300 m beneath sea level (b) An ocean-warming event triggers retreat (c) Retreat is amplified by enhanced calving as the ice sheet retreats into deeper water (d) After the collapse, the ice sheet is in its most retreated position. Isostatic adjustment uplifts the bed (and sill) which will allow the ice sheet to advance again. Insets show a close-up around the sill. [Credit:
Bassis et al., 2017]
During the last glacial period (~110,000-12,500 years ago) the Laurentide Ice Sheet (North America) experienced rapid, episodic, mass loss events – known as Heinrich events. These events are particularly curious as they occurred during the colder portions of the last glacial period, when we would intuitively expect large-scale mass loss during warmer times. In order to understand mass loss m ...[Read More]