Sentences with phrase «glacier behind something»

All told, if the eastern and western Antarctic ice shelves were to melt completely, they would raise sea levels by as much as 230 feet (70 meters); the collapse of smaller shelves like Larsen B has sped up the flow of glaciers behind them into the sea, contributing to the creeping up of high tide levels around the world.

Once again, the demise of floating ice removed the backstop that stabilized glaciers behind it.

The result is the same: Pine Island Glacier has thinned by only 15 percent since 1994, yet the massive glacier behind it has accelerated by 70 percent.

Massive ice shelves that cling to the edges of Antarctica are breaking apart, and their collapse is allowing enormous glaciers behind them to slide into the ocean, raising sea level.

After the smaller Larsen B Ice Shelf, just up the peninsula, quickly broke apart over the span of a few weeks in 2002, studies found that the flow of glaciers behind it accelerated sharply.

The rate of tectonic uplift will increase again when the Scar Inlet ice shelf implodes and the glaciers behind it surge into the ocean.

«This resulted in the dramatic acceleration of the glaciers behind them, with larger volumes of ice entering the ocean and contributing to sea - level rise,» said David Vaughan, glaciologist and director of science at British Antarctic Survey.

The shelves slow and stabilize the glaciers behind them, but they are succumbing to a hidden force: Deep, warming ocean currents are melting the ice from beneath.

When the ice shelf melts, as happened to the huge Larsen B shelf off Antarctica in 2002, the glaciers behind it speed up dramatically in their flow into the sea.

A full explanation will require numerical modeling of glacier flow, but observations to date suggest that ice shelves act as «braking» systems on the glaciers behind them.

As ice shelves collapse the glaciers behind them retreat more quickly, causing further sea - level rise.

Sediment cores the team collected by drilling in front of the current Cosgrove Ice Shelf indicate that relatively warm ocean waters dissolved the vast ice shelf and even some of the glacier behind it about 2000 years ago, they recently reported.

Ice shelves buttress the glaciers behind them, modulating the speed at which these rivers of ice flow into the ocean.

Loss of the Antarctic ice shelves, which extend from the southern polar land mass over the underwater continental shelf, are likely to result in the glaciers behind them flowing more rapidly into [continue reading...]

The glaciers behind it speed up and drain more ice into the ocean.

They hold back the glaciers behind them in what is known as the «buttressing effect».