Stories tagged glaciers

Rubber ducky you're the one...
Courtesy Mark RyanBoy, times must be getting tough if NASA’s latest endeavor is any indication. Researchers from the space agency recently dropped a whole slew of rubber ducks into openings in Greenland's Jakobshaven Glacier in hopes of understanding how and where melt waters from the ice sheet ends up in Baffin Bay. They’re also trying to understand why glaciers increase their speed during the summer months. The Jakobshaven Glacier, which is suspected of calving the iceberg that sank the Titanic in 1912, is Greenland’s fastest moving glacier. The current thinking is that melt water forming on top of the ice flow during the summer months travels down narrow tubes called moulins to the glaciers base where it acts as a lubricant thus speeding up the ice sheet's movement. This isn’t exactly rocket science, is it? Anyway, each little ducky carries a label with the words "science experiment" and "reward" printed on it in three languages, along with an email address. The researchers hope that those who come across the toy quackers will contact them with information about when and where they found them. So far no one has gotten back to NASA but agency officials are confidant when they do it will add to our understanding of glaciers and their role in rising sea levels. So why has NASA has resorted to using such a low-tech approach? One source claims it's because a previous test using a metallic probe failed to return any data. Another source claims the probe is being used in conjunction with the rubber bath toys. Whatever the case it looks duck hunting season has opened.

SOURCES and LINKS

CNN story
NetworkWorld story
Discovery Channel story
Animation about Jakobshaven Glacier

Tags : toys, nasa, glaciers, ducks, climate

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The Briksdal Glacier: Not at its most impressive. Just look away.
Courtesy xdmagAcross the globe, glaciers are suffering the humiliation of being seen in a state of exacerbated shrinkage.

Having gone so long without serious scrutiny as to their size, the bedroom door has been thrown open on the glaciers of the world, leaving them flailing to cover up what little is left of theirs to cover up.

“What did you expect?” Points out one glacier. “We’re cold. that’s what happens.”

Climatologists would disagree, however, on the cause of the shrinkage, if not the shrinkage itself, viewing the phenomenon as a key indicator of a warming climate. Average glacial shrinkage, it is reported, has risen from about 30 centimeters a year between 1980 and 1999, to 1.5 meters in 2006.

The glaciers, as they retreat like “frightened turtles” into their mountain refuges, are causing alarm not only as indicators of global climate change, but for their own diminishing potential to supply fresh water for “drinking, agriculture, industry, and power generation.”

Glaciers are believed to have started shrinking globally around 1850, although the rate of shrinkage looks to have increased dramatically in the early 80’s, and Dr. Wilfried Haeberli, director of the World Glacier Monitoring service, says that “the latest figures are part of what appears to be an accelerating trend with no apparent end in sight.”

Tags : climate change, shrinkage, glaciers

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