Greenland's glaciers might be melting 100 times as fast as previously thought

The Oden Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences at The University of Texas at Austin has created a computer model that can be used to determine the rate at which the glaciers are melting.

The model for vertical glacier fronts is the first of its kind. Recent observations show that the Alaskan glacier front is melting up to 100 times faster than had been thought. The model can be used to improve ocean and ice sheet models which are crucial elements of any global climate model.

Kirstin Schulz is a research associate in the Computational Research in Ice and Ocean Systems Group. If we use our model in an ocean or climate model, we can get a better idea of how glaciers are melting.

Sea level rise can be predicted by the melting of the ice sheet. The second- largest stretch of glaciers on Earth is covered by 80% of the Nordic nation. At the height of the Eemian interglacial period about 130,000 years ago, global sea levels rose by 20 feet.

The risk of falling ice kept oceanographers away from the jagged cliffs of Greenland's glacier fronts for decades.

The melt rate model for floating glaciers was used to apply it to the vertical glacier fronts. It was the best we were able to do. Who knew if it was correct or incorrect? There is more and more evidence that the traditional approach doesn't work at the vertical glacier fronts.

The authors took different routes. They incorporated the unique physics of Greenland's glacier fronts into their model and fed it data closer to a vertical glacier front than before.

Four years ago, Rebecca Jackson at the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences at Rutgers sent robotic kayaks filled with oceanographic sensors to within 400 meters of Alaska's LeConte Glacier. The LeConte glacier front was melting 100 times faster than models had predicted.

A better model was developed with the help of the data set and the others. They considered a new set of equations to describe the melt rate because of the steep incline at which the glaciers hit the ocean.

Ocean climate model results are relevant for humankind to predict trends associated with climate change. It was an important step to make climate models better.

An Improved and Observationally Constrained Melt Rate Parameterization for Vertical Ice Fronts of Marine Terminating Glaciers is a research letter. It was published on 10.1029/2022GL 100654.

Journal information: Geophysical Research Letters