Dubai, United Arab Emirates (CNN) — The interaction of a major glacier in northwest Greenland with ocean tides has led to a melt that was not previously observed, potentially contributing to faster sea level rise, scientists reported Monday.
A group of glaciologists at the University of California-Irvine (UCI) and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) published the study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Monday.
Surveys of the Petermann Glacier revealed that the glacier’s ground line, the area where the ice sheet begins to expand out of the ocean, has been significantly shifted by daily tidal action.
According to Enrico Ceraci, lead author of the study and a scientist at the University of California, Irvine, the Petermann ground line “has moved between 2 and 6 kilometers (1.2 and 3.7 miles) due to tidal action.”
This is an important finding, since the conventional view among scientists was that the ground line does not move with the movement of the tides, and this presents another major source of melt that may accelerate sea level rise.
And between 2016 and 2022, warmer tidal cycles melted a 670-foot-high crater in the lower side of the glacier along the ground line—big enough that two Statues of Liberty could be stacked on top of each other inside.
This phenomenon may worsen in the following years and decades as ocean temperatures rise. CNN had previously reported that sea surface temperatures reached their highest levels on record this spring, a rise that scientists have worried may be part of a worrying new trend.
The study raised further concerns about the already alarming prospect of sea level rise, threatening coastlines around the world.
Melting ice in Greenland is the largest contributor to sea level rise, according to NASA, and has accelerated in recent years. However, the current projections did not take into account this newfound information from the interactions under the ice with the tides.
“Ocean-ice interactions make glaciers more sensitive to ocean warming,” co-author Eric Regno, a professor at the University of California, Irvine, and a research scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said in a statement.
He continued, “These dynamics are not included in the models, and if we did include them, the projections of sea level rise would increase by up to 200 percent, not only for Petermann, but for all the glaciers ending in the ocean, the majority of the North Greenland, and all of Antarctica.”