Greenland's pronounced glacier retreat not irreversible

Sustained retreat of the Pine Island Glacier

Rapid retreat and acceleration of Helheim Glacier, east Greenland

[1] A significant amount of the measured coastal thinning of the Greenland ice sheet may be due to recent acceleration of outlet glaciers. Using remote sensing, we measured two major periods of speedup on Helheim Glacier between 2000 and 2005 that increased peak speeds from approximately 8 to 11 km/yr. These speedups coincided with rapid retreats of the calving front, totaling over 7.5 km. The ...

Glacier retreat and melt-lake expansion at Stephenson Glacier, Heard Island World Heritage Area

Historical records, recent observations, and geomorphological evidence indicate that rates of retreat and downwasting of the tidewater Stephenson Glacier, and concurrent expansion of ice-marginal melt-lakes, has increased by an order of magnitude since 1987. Melt-lake expansion is partly the product of greatly accelerated ablation of older, ice-cored twentieth-century moraines. The timing of th...

Will Present Day Glacier Retreat Increase Volcanic Activity? Stress induced by Recent Glacier Retreat and its Effect on Magmatism at the Vatnajökull ice cap, Iceland

Global warming causes retreat of ice caps and ice sheets. Can melting glaciers trigger increased volcanic activity? Since 1890 the largest ice cap of Iceland, Vatnajökull, with an area of ~8000 km, has been continuously retreating losing about 10% of its mass during last century. Present-day uplift around the ice cap is as high as 25 mm/yr. We evaluate interactions between ongoing glacio-isosta...

Regional and global forcing of glacier retreat during the last deglaciation

The ongoing retreat of glaciers globally is one of the clearest manifestations of recent global warming associated with rising greenhouse gas concentrations. By comparison, the importance of greenhouse gases in driving glacier retreat during the most recent deglaciation, the last major interval of global warming, is unclear due to uncertainties in the timing of retreat around the world. Here we...