Speeding Antarctic Glacier: Scientists Discover Another Reason For Glacial Acceleration

November 19, 2008

New satellite data have helped scientists crack the case of a speeding Antarctic glacier — a finding that promises to help improve sea level forecasts.

Using nearly 50 years of data, University of Maine researchers have determined that subglacial floods in East Antarctica caused a rapid and short-lived acceleration of a major outlet glacier.

Byrd Glacier, Antarctica (Credit: NASA/GSFC/METI/ERSDAC/JAROS, and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team)

Leigh Stearns and Gordon Hamilton of UMaine’s Climate Change Institute, along with Benjamin Smith of the University of Washington, observed that the flow rate of a large outlet glacier in East Antarctica increased by about 10 percent in response to the flooding of two subglacial lakes.

The team’s findings are based on a 48-year record of ice velocities along Byrd Glacier, East Antarctica along with recent satellite observations of ice surface elevation and ice velocities from NASA’s Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer instrument on NASA’s Terra satellite; the Ice, Cloud and Land Elevation Satellite; and Landsat; as well as SPOT and Japan’s Advanced Land Observing Satellite, and have been reported in a Nature Geoscience paper.

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Posted in Earth Sciences, Science and Technology