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The
absence of historical photos raises questions about changes in the
landscape of Greenland since rapid climate change. What we do have
gives a clue.
I would appreciate any information people can bring to bear on this.
The
disappearance of snow and ice from Greenland
The
footage of the landslide in Western Grennland that produced the
tsunami the other day has brought up questions in my mind as to what
this landscape would have looked like back in 1979.
I
have learned that the altitude of the cliffs in this video is about
1000 feet and yet there seems to be less snow about than I would see
on the Southern Alp in NZ in summer.
Is
this normal?
The
following is all that I could find to provide a historical
perspective of what we would normally have expected without rapid
warming
New
details have emerged about the Greenland landslide that occurred in
Karrat Fjord and the deadly tsunami it produced late Saturday (local
time), June 17, 2017.
To
tell whether the island’s glacial cap will melt away any time soon,
researchers are poring over old pictures and drawings for clues to
its past behaviour.
With
Arctic temperatures rising faster than anywhere else on Earth,
Greenland is now losing about 200 billion tonnes of ice per year and
raising ocean levels around the globe. Projections suggest that
melting from the island might swell sea levels by 30 centimetres by
the end of this century. If all Greenland’s ice melted — a
possibility over the next few centuries − it would push up sea
level by more than 6 metres, enough to flood coastal megacities such
as New York and Miami.
But
the projections carry large uncertainties, in part because
researchers lack basic information about Greenland’s past.
Satellite data only go back 40 years, which is why Bjørk and his
colleagues are poring over 180,000 photographs and other data that
record how glaciers have advanced and retreated during cold and warm
spells in the recent past. Their first sets of findings suggest that
Greenland ice has responded more strongly to past climate changes
than was previously realized. Now, the researchers are trying to
unravel what factors within the oceans, atmosphere and inside
glaciers control their behaviour
Nearly 4 million tons crashed into sea! - NEW details about the Greenland Tsunami
June
21, 2017: It was initially thought that the tsunami was created by a
magnitude 4.0 earthquake with the epicenter (17.4 miles) north of the
village of Nuugaatsiaq on the western coast of Greenland. However,
reconnaissance flights performed by the Danish Joint Arctic Command
on June 18 discovered a large landslide scar (approximately 985 x 3
600 feet, thus confirming that the cause of the tsunami was a
landslide. Nearly 4 million tons of earth went crashing into the
sea!
Photos
taken by the Danish Arctic Command
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