European Ice is Racing to the Sea

Crevasses ripple across the surface of the Austfonna ice cap.
Photo Credit: Thorben Dunse, University of Oslo

According to a new study, remote ice caps in northern Europe are losing weight so quickly that they’re racing into the sea 25 times faster than in 1995.

The Austfonna ice cap contains about 600 cubic miles of ice, bigger than most glaciers, but smaller than Antarctic ice sheets. It can be found in northeastern Norway, sitting mostly on land and extending into the Barents Sea.

Satellite observations show the ice cap is shrinking at a faster rate than before.

“What we see here is unusual because it has developed over such a long period of time, and appears to have started when ice began to thin and accelerate at the coast,” said Andrew Shepherd, a study co-author and a professor at the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom.

The cause of this acceleration could lie in a number of explanations including natural causes and warming ocean currents.

Researchers say surface temperatures in the Arctic have doubled compared to the global average.

“Whether or not the warmer ocean water and ice cap behavior are directly linked remains an unanswered question,” Shepherd said. “Feeding the results into existing ice flow models may help us to shed light on the cause, and also improve predictions of global ice loss and sea level rise in the future.”

Read more on livescience.com.