Sentences with phrase «of glacier flow»

This ignores the mechanism of glacier flow which is by creep: glaciers are not melting from the surface down, nor are they slidin...

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.

However, as Timothy explained in # 121, in addition to the direct sea level rise that occurs when ice shelves melt, there is a much larger secondary effect, in that ice shelves act as a brake, greatly reducing the rate of flow of the glaciers behind them from the land to the sea; and when ice shelves melt, the rate of glacier flow increases quite rapidly.

We have detailed maps of glacier flow towards the ocean.

Nonetheless, Khazendar and his colleagues say that two of the glaciers flowing into Larsen C have already begun to accelerate as the ice shelf has weakened.

Schematic cartoon of a glacier flowing into an ice shelf, showing the grounding line and calving at the ice cliff at the edge of the ice shelf.

Not exact matches

Howat and his team were able to figure this out by creating high - resolution topographic models of the glaciers and their boundaries, as well as a numerical model of exactly how much water was flowing off these coastal glaciers and ice caps — technology that wasn't available back in 1996.

Radar measurements and models of Earthly glacial ice flows led researchers to conclude that the glaciers spotted on Mars from orbiters contain nearly 150 billion cubic meters of water.

Most surges, broadly defined as a flow at least 10 and often hundreds of times faster than a glacier's usual pace of advance, are quieter affairs.

Now, by studying glaciers from Tibet to the Arctic islands of the Svalbard archipelago in Norway, researchers are starting to understand why some glaciers swing between extremes of stagnation and crushing flow, and how surges may be predicted.

For example, Kangerdlugssuaq glacier has lost mass from melting and, in its thinner form, has less weight to speed the flow of its ice toward the sea.

They can block rivers, creating lakes that can later unleash floods, and by depleting glacier mass, they can threaten the flow of meltwater that downstream towns and farms may depend on.

Studying surging glaciers could also offer insights into grander - scale ice flows with global consequences: the movements of the ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland, which can change abruptly, altering the ice discharges that affect sea level.

This could allow the ice cap to flow like a glacier, say David Fisher at the Geological Survey of Canada in Ottawa, and colleagues.

Larsen C is approximately 350m thick and floats on the seas at the edge of West Antarctica, holding back the flow of glaciers that feed into it.

Individual chunks seen in the image range from 1 to several kilometers long, and chains of the bergs seem to mark the edges of nitrogen glaciers flowing from the icy highlands onto a broad plain.

Lacking many ice shelves to stem its flow, the glacier is particularly vulnerable to warming, part of the so - called weak underbelly of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet.

The shelves act as a buttress to the «grounded» ice, helping slow the flow of the ice sheet's glaciers into the ocean.

As an example, Howat pointed to the portion of the mosaic showing Jakobshavn Glacier, the fastest - flowing glacier in the Greenland Ice Sheet.

Over the next months and years, researchers will monitor the response of Larsen C, and the glaciers that flow into it, through the use of satellite imagery, airborne surveys, automated geophysical instruments and associated field work.

The floating platforms of ice that ring the coast are thinning, glaciers are surging toward the sea, meltwater is flowing across the surface, fast - growing moss is turning the once shimmering landscape green and a massive iceberg the size of Delaware broke off into the ocean in July of 2017.

The crack remained dormant for decades, stuck in a section of the ice shelf called a suture zone, an area where glaciers flowing into the ice shelf come together.

This acceleration in glacier flow may explain a recent observation by Eric Rignot and Isabella Velicogna of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Some glaciers on the perimeter of West Antarctica are receiving increased heat from deep, warm ocean currents, which melt ice from the grounding line, releasing the brake and causing the glaciers to flow and shed icebergs into the ocean more quickly.

Beneath a glacier in the Transantarctic Mountains some 12 million years ago, the downhill flow of a massive, growing reservoir of meltwater was restrained by walls of ice.

Today, as warming waters caused by climate change flow underneath the floating ice shelves in Pine Island Bay, the Antarctic Ice Sheet is once again at risk of losing mass from rapidly retreating glaciers.

The study also suggests that the accelerated melting of mountain glaciers in recent decades may explain a phenomenon that has long puzzled scientists — why Arctic and sub-Arctic rivers have increased their water flow during the winter even without a correlative increase in rain or snowfall.

But now, a vulnerable glacier on the other side of the island, part of a massive flow of ice known as the Northeast Greenland Ice Stream, shows that yet another region of Greenland is feeling the effects of warming oceans.

Small mountain glaciers play a big role in recharging vital aquifers and in keeping rivers flowing during the winter, according to a new study published in Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union.

That means that the Southern Hemisphere glaciers kept flowing after the end of the cold snap, implying that the Younger Dryas did not hold sway there.

At the grounding line, the ice detaches from the bedrock and juts out into the water as a kind of floating ledge, or ice shelf, which helps to stabilize the glacier and hold back the flow of ice behind it.

In recent years, the flow of these glaciers into the ocean has largely accelerated (red), which exacerbates melting.

Now, warming seawater intruding underneath has loosened the glaciers» grip on bedrock, speeding their flow toward the sea and causing increasing amounts of ice to break off into the ocean.

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.

These two glaciers have been described as the «weak underbelly» of the ice sheet because surges in the ice flow there could theoretically cause the rapid disintegration of the entire West Antarctic ice sheet.

The ordinary meter - or - two - a-year speed of the glacier's flow increased roughly tenfold as it passed over the lakes.

A glaciologist rather than a biologist, he wanted to investigate a question critical to climate change: Do subglacial rivers and lakes lubricate the movement of ice over land — and might they somehow accelerate a glacier's flow into the ocean, triggering rapid sea level rise?

This information would help Tulaczyk understand whether subglacial water lubricates the flow of ice, and whether it might play a role in the runaway acceleration of glaciers that has occurred in some parts of Antarctica.

Research over the past couple of decades has shown there is flowing water at the base of glaciers.

So Neel sized up four rock glaciers in Colorado and compared them to one of the martian debris flows imaged by NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter.

According to Pappalardo, Greenberg's results can be explained by flows of warmer ice like those found in glaciers on Earth.

Glaciologists reported in June that the last remnant of the Larsen B Ice Shelf is splintering, and glaciers flowing into it are accelerating.

But an ice shelf is thought to act as a «cork in the bottle,» damming the flow of the land - based glacier that slowly feeds the shelf in the sea.

The warm ocean water presently melting Totten Glacier — East Antarctica's largest glacier, which flows from the Aurora Basin — could be an early warning sign, said co-lead author Amelia Shevenell, an associate professor in the University of South Florida College of Marine Science.

Two new reports have traced the effects of the collapse on the continent's remaining glaciers and found that they are flowing ever faster into the surrounding Weddell Sea.

Mouginot et al. report that between 2002 and 2014, the area covered by the glacier's ice shelf shrank by 95 %; since 1999, the glacier's flow rate has nearly doubled; and its acceleration increased threefold in the fall of 2012.

The research model predicts slightly elevated heat flux upstream of several fast - flowing glaciers in Greenland, including Jakobshavn Isbræ in the central - west, the fastest moving glacier on Earth.

USGS estimates that Alaska's glaciers and ice fields are responsible for nearly 50 percent of the water that flows into the Gulf of Alaska.

That glacier is a coastal system that flows into the Gulf of Alaska.

Researchers from the University of Washington and the German Space Agency (DLR) measured the dramatic speeds of the fast - flowing glacier in 2012 and 2013.