COSEE Ocean Systems: News
Earth's internal heat drives rapid ice flow and subglacial melting in Greenland
Description: To understand Greenland's ice of today researchers have to go far back into Earth's history. The island's lithosphere has hot depths which originate in its distant geological past and cause Greenland's ice to rapidly flow and melt from below. An anomaly zone crosses Greenland from west to east where present-day flow of heat from the Earth's interior is elevated. With this anomaly, an international team of geoscientists could explain observations from radar and ice core drilling data that indicate a widespread melting beneath the ice sheet and increased sliding at the base of the ice that drives the rapid ice flow over a distance of 750 kilometres from the summit area of the Greenland ice sheet to the North Atlantic Ocean. [Source: Helmholtz Centre Potsdam - GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences]
URL: http://www.alphagalileo.org/ViewItem.aspx?ItemId=162703&CultureCode=en
Availability: Full Text
Source: Helmholtz Centre Potsdam - GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences
Publish Date: 4/1/2016
Reading Level: Basic
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