Greenland surface melt

Leverett Glacier in west Greenland about 50 km from the ice sheet margin taken on 19 August 2009. New findings show that there was a clear regional slowdown in the flow of land-terminating ice when surface meltwater rises. The reduced lubrication, caused by better meltwater drainage after summer, is suggested to be responsible for the slowdown. Scientists studied 30 years of Landsat data, provided through ESA’s Third Party Mission agreement and from the US Geological Survey, to track the movement of stable features such as crevasses in satellite images taken every year from 1985 to 2014. This allowed them to map annual ice speed and compare it with meltwater produced on the surface.

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