Greenland’s ‘Ice Quakes’ May Set a Record

[phantom power]

One of the more amazing facts about the ongoing destruction of the Greenland ice sheet is that it is producing earthquakes that can be detected worldwide. Now, fresh evidence is at hand to show that these “ice quakes” are spreading to previously quiescent parts of Greenland. We’re only in September, but it seems increasingly likely that 2012 will set a record for such quakes.

Some readers may remember my article from 2010 about the acceleration of Greenland’s outlet glaciers, which carry ice from the middle of the great ice sheet and dump it into the sea. Their speedup, in fits and starts over the past decade, has coincided with a lot of other evidence that the ice sheet is deteriorating at an accelerating clip.

And it is the calving of huge icebergs from these sped-up glaciers that is producing the earthquakes. They are many times weaker than, say, the earthquake off the coast of Japan last year, but they are strong enough to be detected by the worldwide network of seismometers.

One of the scientists I quoted two years ago was Meredith Nettles, a seismologist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, a unit of Columbia University that is just outside New York City. With her colleagues Goran Ekstrom and Geoffrey A. Abers, she discovered the glacial earthquakes in 2003.

http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/21/greenlands-ice-quakes-may-set-a-record/

[XemaSab]

1. .

[pscot]

2. Greenland rising

http://sciencenordic.com/greenland-rising-out-sea

Melting ice is currently causing Greenland to rise by 3 cm a year. This rate is accelerating, and if the entire ice sheet is to disappear, the island would rise about one kilometre, new GPS readings reveal.

[phantom power]

3. that is a big-ass hydrostatic rebound

[pscot]

5. 3 cm = 1.18 inches

A foot every 10 years. So it'll take thousand years to rise a kilometer. No worries, right?

[XemaSab]

6. I wonder if that's been factored in to sea level rise

n/t

[pscot]

7. Somebody has to be looking at it

It could be a career move for an ambitious grad student. There's definitely a niche there.

[longship]

4. If that happens it won't be the ice quakes that will be troubling.

It will be the drowning people in all the coastal cities. Or, it will be the cost of moving all them to safety away from the shorelines.

Sorry FL, you have to evacuate your state.