A peninsula long thought to be part of Greenland's mainland turned out to be an island when a glacier retreated.
Increasing global temperatures are not simply melting glaciers; they are changing the very geography of coastlines of Greenland and the Arctic. Nunataks -- "lonely mountains" in Inuit -- that were encased in Greenland's ice sheet are being freed of their age-old bonds, exposing a new chain of islands, and a new opportunity for Arctic explorers to write their names on the landscape. But the sudden appearance of islands is a symptom of an ice sheet going into retreat, scientists say.
"The general thinking until very recently was that ice sheets don't react very quickly to climate," said Martin Truffer, a glaciologist at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks. "But that thinking is changing right now, because we're seeing things that people have thought are impossible."
Greenland is covered by 630,000 cubic miles of ice -- enough water to raise global sea levels by 23 feet.
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Comments
Just wait long enough for uplift, it'll become a peninsula.
Bob
Posted by: Bob O'H | January 16, 2007 1:52 PM
However I would expect SLR from GIS to exceed isostatic rebound at least until GIS has stablized.
Posted by: llewelly | January 16, 2007 4:02 PM
Is that because of the global warming that isn't occurring?
Clapping
Chardyspal
Posted by: Chardyspal | January 16, 2007 9:27 PM
any info on bio mass of hagfish off greenland
Posted by: kieran | May 2, 2007 10:17 PM
i am looking for a island no one owns and i can get to by or to take so please email me very soon thanks for your time harold gill
Posted by: harold | June 9, 2007 2:32 PM