Scientists are digging up Adélie penguin guano to study millennia of Antarctica’s history.
glaciers & ice sheets
Posted inEditors' Highlights
New Method to Measure Ice Cap Thickness
Naturally generated seismic waves bouncing up and down through an ice sheet can be used to determine the thickness of the ice and monitor future changes in ice thickness.
Posted inNews
Enormous Impact Crater Spotted in Greenland Under Glacial Ice
Ice-penetrating radar revealed a 31-kilometer impact crater—one of the world’s largest—in northwestern Greenland that might have been formed fewer than 20,000 years ago.
Posted inEditors' Highlights
Greenland Basal Melting May Be Considerably Less Than We Think
New observations of surface ice velocity over northern Greenland challenge current assumptions used in ice sheet models to model the deformation mechanisms that govern ice flow.
Posted inResearch Spotlights
Glacial Meltwater Plumes Support Greenland Phytoplankton Blooms
Field measurements from the Bowdoin Glacier show that entrainment of deep water into upwelling glacial discharge delivers crucial nutrients to the surface of the surrounding fjord.
Posted inNews
Tiny Algae May Have Prompted a Mass Extinction
Dead algae sinking to the ocean floor may have sequestered carbon 445 million years ago, triggering the glaciation that accompanied the Late Ordovician mass extinction.
Posted inNews
Satellite Data Archives Reveal Unrecorded Himalayan Floods
Almost 30 years’ worth of Landsat observations created a comprehensive inventory of catastrophic floods caused by glacial lakes bursting through their rock dams.
Posted inResearch Spotlights
A New Model of Drumlin Formation
Observations from the surge-type glacier Múlajökull in Iceland underpin new modeling results that suggest the glacier’s drumlins grow during quiet intervals of normal flow between glacial surges.
Posted inScience Updates
Envisioning and Sustaining Science at Summit Station, Greenland
Summit Station Science Summit; Arlington, Virginia, 28–29 March 2017
Posted inResearch Spotlights
Massive Waves of Melting Greenland Ice Warped Earth’s Crust
A novel method uses shifting bedrock to trace pulses of mass that propagate down a glacier.