It takes a long time to build and melt an ice sheet, but glaciers can react quickly to temperature changes.
The southern half of Greenland is reacting to what we think is climate warming. The northern half is waiting but I don't think it's going to take long.
These findings call into question predictions of the future of Greenland in a warmer climate from computer models that do not include variations in glacier flow as a component of change. Actual changes will likely be much larger than predicted by these models.
The behavior of the glaciers that dump ice into the sea is the most important aspect of understanding how an ice sheet will evolve in a changing climate. It takes a long time to build and melt an ice sheet, but glaciers can react quickly to temperature changes.
The mass loss resulting from this glacier acceleration in Greenland is very significant. These are very active glaciers. They all end up in the ocean, discharge icebergs and are very dynamic. One you push them a little bit out of equilibrium, they start retreating very fast.
Greenland is probably going to contribute more and faster to sea level rise than predicted.
This is clearly a result of warming around the periphery of Greenland.
Climate warming can work in different ways, but generally speaking, if you warm up the ice sheet, the glacier will flow faster.
A few years back, we thought ice sheets might grow because of increased precipitation. Now we see that rates of glacier flow are changing. We think the process that is winning overall is the rate of glacier flow.
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