OMG! Ice is Melting from Below
Oceans Melting Greenland (OMG) scientists are heading into the field this week to better understand how seawater is melting Greenland’s ice from below. (Yes, those black specks are people next to an iceberg.) While NASA is studying ocean properties (things like temperature, salinity and currents), other researchers are eager to incorporate our data into their work. In fact, University of Washington scientists are using OMG data to study narwhals – smallish whales with long tusks – otherwise known as the “unicorns of the sea.”
Our researchers are also in the field right now studying how Alaska’s ice is changing. Operation IceBridge, our longest airborne campaign, is using science instruments on airplanes to study and measure the ice below.
What happens in the Arctic doesn’t stay in the Arctic (or the Antarctic, really). In a warming world, the greatest changes are seen in the coldest places. Earth’s cryosphere – its ice sheets, sea ice, glaciers, permafrost and snow cover – acts as our planet’s thermostat and deep freeze, regulating temperatures and storing most of our freshwater. Next month, we’re launching ICESat-2, our latest satellite to study Earth’s ice!
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The glacier melt has been going on for a long time due to our neglect, we are just now starting to see the danger in climate change with the weather shifts to our own regional patterns. In 2015 I was in Greenland and went hiking with a glacier scientist who said then that the melt was happening beneath and we were not really seeing the devastating act at that moment, but would. And that time is NOW. If this current administration keeps rolling back the EPA, letting big companies lift their protections with concerns to the environment, letting them dump toxic matter into the atmosphere, into our streams... there is no going back.
