2011 — Withering in the warm temperatures, melting ice of the glaciers on thousands of Canadian Arctic islands off the coast of northwestern Greenland seems to be literally racing to the sea – contributing unexpectedly large volumes to global sea level rise.
A six-year study led by University of Michigan researcher Alex Gardner, just published in the journal Nature, estimates that between 2004 and 2009 the islands of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago shed enough water to fill Lake Erie three-quarters full and added a millimeter to the height of the world’s oceans.
Gardner says he was as surprised as anyone that the region was adding so much water to the sea. “Now we realize that outside of Antarctica and Greenland, it was the largest contributor for the years 2007 through 2009,” he said in a University of Michigan release. “This area is highly sensitive and if temperatures continue to increase, we will see much more melting.”
While six years is too short a period to establish a trend, Gardner noted, the pace of the melting accelerated dramatically during the study – at a time when temperatures rose just one degree.
In the first three years, from 2004 to 2006, the region lost seven cubic miles of water per year, on average. In the following three years, through 2009, when average air temperature was one degree Celsius warmer, the melt water volume jumped to 22 cubic miles of water per year.
“This is a big response to a small change in climate,” observes Gardner. “If the warming continues and we start to see similar responses in other glaciated regions, I would say it’s worrisome, but right now we just don’t know if it will continue.”
The study was based on satellite-borne measures of changes in elevation and gravity field that detects mass loss as well as computer-based modeling techniques.
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