Greenland Ice Sheet is sliding more than anyone realized impacting sea level rise!

A National Science Foundation-funded team of researchers from the Universities of Wyoming and Montana has discovered that the Greenland Ice Sheet is sliding more than anyone realized. Surprisingly, they found that the ice slides across hard bedrock all winter long, a surface that in theory, ice shouldn’t be able to slide over easily- especially in winter when there is no surface meltwater to make a slippery bed. This sliding helps move a lot if ice from high elevation to lower elevation, where it either melts or is dumped into the ocean, impacting sea level rise.
The team installed 212 tilt sensors within a network of boreholes drilled into the ice bed. The sensors allowed them to observe changes in the shape of the ice sheet and sliding movement. The researchers hope to improve the accuracy of ice sheet models as they try to predict future loss of ice from Greenland.

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