More Frequent Glacial Quakes on Greenland Signal Ice Retreat

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https://eos.org/articles/more-frequent-glacial-quakes-on-greenland-signal-ice-retreat

Source:  By JoAnna Wendel, EoS - Earth & Space Science News, AGU
For Investigation:  10.3

Excerpt: As the Greenland ice sheet creaks and cracks, scientists are listening.Since the 1990s, researchers have seen a rise in the number of glacial earthquakes emanating from Greenland’s glaciers—earthquakes that stem from massive blocks of ice calving from glacier fronts. Nearly half of the glacial earthquakes in the past quarter century occurred between 2011 and 2013, a team of researchers has now found after digging through seismic data. These earthquakes could be a signal of a warming climate’s effect on the stability of the ice sheet itself.  “The rise in glacial earthquakes is part of the larger pattern of ice loss that is happening all over the Greenland ice sheet,” said Kira Olsen, a Ph.D. candidate at Columbia University in New York, who led the new study. Along with recorded ice loss and melt runoff, more frequent glacial earthquakes are “another piece of evidence that Greenland is rapidly losing ice.”...

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