Massive Environmental Disaster: Underwater Waves Rapidly Erode Greenland’s Glaciers
Scientists warn of a significant acceleration in the melting of Greenland’s glaciers due to unusual giant underwater waves caused by iceberg calving.
These waves, resembling tsunamis, generate active mixing of water masses beneath the ice, undermining their stability and increasing ice loss rates.
Researchers from the University of Zurich and the University of Washington employed unique fiber optic technologies to explore these processes at depths, laying a ten-kilometer-long cable along the seabed near the critical Ecaliort-Sermiag Glacier.
Using distributed acoustic sensing systems, scientists monitored the movements of ice and seawater mixing caused by cracks and falling icebergs.
They found that warmer, denser seawater at the bottom intensifies erosion processes triggered by melting, destabilizing ice walls and accelerating calving.
Meanwhile, colossal submarine waves propagate beneath the surface, continuously promoting water mixing and bringing warmer waters to the ice edge, thus heightening melting and destabilization.
Climate change phenomena are thus directly linked to the rapid disintegration of massive ice sheets, with profound implications for global sea levels.
Greenland, already undergoing dramatic environmental shifts, is losing ice mass at an alarming rate, posing unpredictable risks to the entire planet’s climate system.