!Discover over 1,000 fresh articles every day

Get all the latest

نحن لا نرسل البريد العشوائي! اقرأ سياسة الخصوصية الخاصة بنا لمزيد من المعلومات.

Discovering Images Reveal the History of Ice in Greenland

Forgotten aerial images of Greenland from the 1930s, discovered in a castle outside Copenhagen, have allowed researchers to establish a history of ice retreat and advance in the region. The work, conducted by Anders Bjørk at the University of Copenhagen and his colleagues, aims to provide a deeper understanding of how climate change has affected ice loss and glacier movement over the past 80 years.

History of Ice in Greenland

Most studies on Greenland’s glaciers have only been conducted since satellite imaging became available in the 1970s, thus the data is relatively short-term. However, by using aerial photos from surveys in the 1930s of southeastern Greenland’s coast, along with World War II-era U.S. Army aerial photos and modern satellite images, Bjørk and his colleagues were able to observe high-precision changes in the glacier landscape from a time when few glacier measurements were available.

Changes in Ice Over Recent Decades

Analysis of the images indicates that the ice retreat in the last decade was similar to that during a comparable warming period in the 1930s. However, while glaciers flowing into the ocean have been retreating rapidly in the second millennium, the glaciers that terminate on land underwent the fastest retreat 80 years ago.

References: Bjørk, A. A. et al. Nature Geoscience http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ngeo1481 (2012).

Authors: Leigh Phillips

You can also search for this author in PubMed and Google Scholar.

Related Links

– Witnessing a glacier’s race to the sea 2012-Apr-26

– Renegade glaciers gain ice 2012-Apr-15

– Glaciologists to target third pole 2012-Apr-02

Copyright and permissions: Copyright and permissions can be viewed at the related links.

This article was published in Nature on May 28, 2012.

Article link: https://doi.org/10.1038/nature.2012.10725

You can download the article as a PDF.

Number of accesses: 1177

Number of citations: 98

Article details: The article was published in Nature in 2012 and written by Leigh Phillips.

Source: https://www.nature.com/news/rediscovered-photos-reveal-greenland-s-glacier-history-1.10725


Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *