Melting Rate of Greenland Glacier Confirmed 100x Faster in New Computer Model

Researchers at The University of Texas at Austin's Oden Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences have developed a new computer model that calculates the rate of melting of Greenland glacier fronts at 100x faster that the current computation.

New Computer Model

The model is the first created especially for vertical glacier fronts, where ice and ocean meet at a sharp angle.

It reflects recent discoveries that the melting rate of the glacier front in Alaska is up to 100 times faster than previously believed.

The model can be used to enhance ocean as well as ice sheet models, which are essential components of any global climate model, the researchers claim.

Kirstin Schulz, an Oden Institute's Computational Research in Ice and Ocean Systems Group (CRIOS) research associate, said that the Antarctic, where the system is very different, has been the basis for glacier front melt models up until this point.

Schulz is the lead author of the research.

They can gain a much clearer understanding of how vertical glacier fronts are melting by incorporating their model into an ocean or climate model.

Melting Rate of Greenland Glacier

One of the main indicators of sea level rise is the melting of the Greenland ice sheet.

The second-largest glacier chain on Earth, this frozen expanse covers approximately 80% of the Nordic countries.

Global sea levels might rise by 20 feet, or roughly 6.1 meters, if it completely melts, as they did at the peak of the Eemian interglacial period roughly 125,000 years ago.

Oceanographers were forced to base their simulation models on the stable ice shelves that have supported Antarctica for decades because of the threat of falling ice.

This prevented them from accessing the jarring cliffs of Greenland's glacier fronts.

Schulz said that For many years, the melting rate model for floating glaciers in the Antarctic was used to calculate the fronts of vertical glaciers in Greenland.

Given the limited observations, it was the best that could be done, but there is mounting evidence that the conventional method results in excessively low melting rates at Greenland's vertical glacier fronts, Newsbreak reported.

In creating their model, Schulz, together with co-authors An T. Nguyen and Helen Pillar, took a different approach.

They fed it data taken closer than ever before to a vertical glacier front, taking advantage of the special physics of Greenland's glacier fronts.

100x Faster

Rebecca Jackson, a professor at Rutgers University, sent robotic kayaks to within 400 meters of LeConte Glacier in Alaska, where people are afraid to tread, four years ago.

The robotic kayaks were equipped with oceanographic sensors.

Her data set revealed that, surprisingly, the LeConte glacier front was melting 100x faster than predicted by the available glacier melt models.

With this data available, Schulz collaborated with Nguyen and Pillar to create a more accurate model.

They considered a new series of equations to analyze the melting rate, taking into account the sharp angle at which Greenland's glacier fronts meet the ocean.

Schulz said that it is crucial to get the results of ocean climate models right because they are very important for humankind's ability to predict trends related to climate change. This was a crucial step in improving climate models, PhysOrg reported.

The work of Schulz, Nguyen, and Pillar was recently published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.