New NASA research has found that cracks on the surface of the Helheim Glacier in SE Greenland allows meltwater to drain directly to the ocean. This is yet another example of the unraveling of the polar ice caps due to human caused climate change. It reflects the increasing role of Greenland and Antarctica in sea level rise.
According to NASA, Greenland adds meltwater to the sea mainly through surface melt and ice flow. Surface melt has increased in recent decades not only by warming temperatures, but also by the soot that settles on Greenland causing a loss of solar reflectivity back to space. The soot, a result of our burning of fossil fuels and from climate change caused forest and grassland fires, settles on the ice sheet, darkening it and absorbing solar energy which creates more and more surface melt as a result. In western Greenland, increasing amounts of meltwater create a mind boggling network of rivers, supra and sub glacial lakes on the surface. In that part of Greenland, the melt drains through the ice down to the bedrock via moulins, and enters the ocean.
NASA notes that SE Greenland, where Helheim Glacier is located, has a very moist environment and that surface water does not appear there despite rapid melting.
But southeast Greenland is very different – lakes and rivers do not form, although the ice does melt. Instead, vast reservoirs of water become trapped within the firn layer (a band of compacted snow). In 2011, scientists discovered these aquifers around 40 feet (12 meters) beneath the surface of the ice. Researchers calculated that these firn aquifers cover around 8,455 square miles (21,900 square kilometers) of Greenland and hold a Lake Tahoe-sized volume of water. The aquifer remains liquid year-round because the region’s heavy snow fall creates a thick blanket that insulates the aquifer from the freezing air temperatures above.
“These firn aquifers are the analogs to the surface water that we can see in western Greenland,” Poinar said. “Southeast Greenland is perpetually covered in snow and has hardly any bare ice, so in the summer water doesn’t pool up like it does on bare ice in western Greenland, forming lakes and rivers; instead, it percolates downward and disappears into places where we can’t see it.”
Poinar studied a segment of the aquifer located in the Helheim Glacier area in southeast Greenland, where ground-penetrating radar measurements collected by Operation IceBridge, NASA’s aerial survey of changes in polar ice, showed that a 2-mile long section of the aquifer had drained a large volume of water between the spring of 2012 and the spring of 2013.
Directly downstream of this section of the aquifer, the researchers identified a field of crevasses (cracks in the ice); due to gravity, they thought, the aquifer water should flow into these openings. To find out whether the water refroze within the crevasses or fractured all the way to the bedrock, Poinar built a computer model of how water from the firn aquifer widens, deepens, and refreezes within the cracks. The model demonstrated that the water makes the crevasses crack faster than the water can refreeze, thus allowing the meltwater to reach the bedrock in a matter of weeks to months.
Calving event at Helheim Glacier filmed in 2010
Just look at all of that ice at Helheim Glacier. The rapid retreat of the calving front is as scary as the new pathway for meltwater to the ocean discovered by NASA. Donald Trump’s Mar a Lago palace, as well as his other South Florida properties, do not stand a chance to avoid inundation by rising sea levels, because the climate cares not one whit what Donald “Take the Oil” Trump believes.
The Washington Post reports on the defiance by Climate Scientists at NASA who continue to post articles on Facebook and are now tweeting global warming facts to the world that Climate Change is indeed occurring and that we are running out of time.
Trump has long been a global warming doubter, at one point calling it a Chinese hoax. In a November interview with the New York Times, he would only concede there may be “some connectivity” between human activity and climate change.
But on Monday, and in direct contradiction to Trump, the @NASAClimate Twitter account retweeted a scientific finding that humans are climate change’s dominant cause. “Humans are changing the climate 170 times faster than natural forces, according to a new study,” the tweet said.
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Trump, of course, has been dismissive of the scale of the problem, telling The Washington Post: “I just think we have much bigger risks.”
The Facebook post touting the risk of climate change damages then linked to NASA’s website on climate change effects. It states scientists have “high confidence” in predictions of future temperature rise. This doesn’t quite square with a statement of Rex Tillerson, now Trump’s secretary of state. Tillerson said the ability to predict the effect of increasing greenhouse gases is “very limited” during his confirmation hearing.
Trump is not alone in his anti-science crusade though, the GOP Congress is hard at work in their attempt to destroy the collection of critical satellite data of NASA’s Earth Sciences. E&E News reports on the GOP plot to derail the Climate Change fight.
It's still unclear exactly how lawmakers plan to transform NASA's mission, but Republicans and Trump administration officials have said they want the agency to focus on deep-space missions and away from climate change research, which is a part of its Earth Sciences Division. That has created uncertainty about the fate of the Earth Sciences Division, which accounts for about $2 billion of NASA's $20 billion budget.
At a House Science, Space and Technology Committee hearing yesterday, Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) said he wants a "rebalancing" of NASA's mission. The lawmaker told E&E News he wants the agency to reprioritize its mission because the Obama administration cut space exploration funds.
Specifically, that could mean NASA's work on climate change would go to another agency, with or without funding, or possibly would get cut. Smith and other Republicans avoided laying out specifics but acknowledged that earth science at NASA would likely face some significant changes in the near future.
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Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) said he expects that climate research could be targeted by Republicans in the budget reauthorization, especially since previous Republican proposals called for shifting climate change away from NASA to U.S. EPA or other agencies. But that just included moving the responsibilities of the NASA climate work to EPA without any extra funding, he said. Beyer said it's clear that the GOP is targeting research because it doesn't like the information it imparts, and that he expects it will soon come after NASA's climate change work.