NASA defies Trump's doubts on climate science. Identifies new path for Greenland meltwater to Ocean

New NASA research has found that cracks on the surface of the Helheim Glacier in SE Greenland allows meltwater to drain directly to the ocean. This is yet another example of the unraveling of the polar ice caps due to human caused climate change. It reflects the increasing role of Greenland and Antarctica in sea level rise.

According to NASA, Greenland adds meltwater to the sea mainly through surface melt and ice flow. Surface melt has increased in recent decades not only by warming temperatures, but also by the soot that settles on Greenland causing a loss of solar reflectivity back to space. The soot, a result of our burning of fossil fuels and from climate change caused forest and grassland fires, settles on the ice sheet, darkening it and absorbing solar energy which creates more and more surface melt as a result. In western Greenland, increasing amounts of meltwater create a mind boggling network of rivers, supra and sub glacial lakes on the surface. In that part of Greenland, the melt drains through the ice down to the bedrock via moulins, and enters the ocean.

NASA notes that SE Greenland, where Helheim Glacier is located, has a very moist environment and that surface water does not appear there despite rapid melting.

But southeast Greenland is very different – lakes and rivers do not form, although the ice does melt. Instead, vast reservoirs of water become trapped within the firn layer (a band of compacted snow).  In 2011, scientists discovered these aquifers around 40 feet (12 meters) beneath the surface of the ice. Researchers calculated that these firn aquifers cover around 8,455 square miles (21,900 square kilometers) of Greenland and hold a Lake Tahoe-sized volume of water. The aquifer remains liquid year-round because the region’s heavy snow fall creates a thick blanket­ that insulates the aquifer from the freezing air temperatures above.

“These firn aquifers are the analogs to the surface water that we can see in western Greenland,” Poinar said. “Southeast Greenland is perpetually covered in snow and has hardly any bare ice, so in the summer water doesn’t pool up like it does on bare ice in western Greenland, forming lakes and rivers; instead, it percolates downward and disappears into places where we can’t see it.”

Poinar studied a segment of the aquifer located in the Helheim Glacier area in southeast Greenland, where ground-penetrating radar measurements collected by Operation IceBridge, NASA’s aerial survey of changes in polar ice, showed that a 2-mile long section of the aquifer had drained a large volume of water between the spring of 2012 and the spring of 2013.

Directly downstream of this section of the aquifer, the researchers identified a field of crevasses (cracks in the ice); due to gravity, they thought, the aquifer water should flow into these openings. To find out whether the water refroze within the crevasses or fractured all the way to the bedrock, Poinar built a computer model of how water from the firn aquifer widens, deepens, and refreezes within the cracks. The model demonstrated that the water makes the crevasses crack faster than the water can refreeze, thus allowing the meltwater to reach the bedrock in a matter of weeks to months.

Calving event at Helheim Glacier filmed in 2010

Just look at all of that ice at Helheim Glacier. The rapid retreat of the calving front is as scary as the new pathway for meltwater to the ocean discovered by NASA. Donald Trump’s Mar a Lago palace, as well as his other South Florida properties, do not stand a chance to avoid inundation by rising sea levels, because the climate cares not one whit what Donald “Take the Oil” Trump believes.