Geothermal Heating Accelerating Greenland's Ice Melt

Everyone who follows the issue of melting ice knows that Northern ice is melting, but a new study shows that it is not only melting from above due to global warming, it is also melting from below. The fact that the ice is melting from above and below has important implications for scientific models.

The international research initiative IceGeoHeat led by the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences published their research in Nature Geoscience. The continental ice sheets play a central role in climate. GFZ scientists Alexey Petrunin and Irina Rogozhina have created a model which calculates ice melt from geothermal forces.

The Greenland lithosphere (the crust and upper mantle of the earth) is 2.8 to 1.7 billion years old and is only about 70 to 80 kilometers thick under central parts of Greenland. Presently the Greenland ice sheet loses about 227 gigatonnes of ice per year and contributes about 0.7 millimeters to the currently observed mean sea level change of about 3 mm per year.

© 2013, Richard Matthews. All rights reserved.

Related Articles
Video - Methane is the Ticking Time Bomb Beneath the Ice
Video - Massive Costs Associated with Arctic Methane
Video - Unlocking Methane in the Permafrost is a Global Warming Time Bomb
More Evidence that Arctic Warming is an Economic and Ecological Time Bomb
Why the Fate of the Arctic Should be of Concern to Us All
Video - O' Canada Stand Up for the Arctic and Oppose Climate Change
Its Official Arctic Sea Ice is at its Lowest Level in Recorded History
The Dramatic Implications of Melting Arctic Sea Ice
Melting Arctic Ice is Releasing Massive Amounts of Methane
Scientists Link Loss of Arctic Sea Ice to Anomalous Weather
Video - Warming Arctic, Changing Planet
Video - Arctic Warming: Risks for Methane Emissions
Northern Ice is Melting at a Dramatic Rate
Environmental Tipping Points

SHARE

Melili

• 
• 
• 
• 
•