09 April 2023

How Fast Can The Ice Sheets Melt?

If ice sheets melt faster than expected, then global sea levels should rise faster than expected. 

Ice sheets can retreat up to 600 meters a day during periods of climate warming, 20 times faster than the highest rate of retreat previously measured. An international team of researchers used high-resolution imagery of the seafloor to reveal just how quickly a former ice sheet that extended from Norway retreated at the end of the last Ice Age, about 20,000 years ago.

From Science Daily citing Christine L. Batchelor, et al., "Rapid, buoyancy-driven ice-sheet retreat of hundreds of metres per day." Nature (2023); DOI: 10.1038/s41586-023-05876-1

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