Researchers concerned over expanding fractures in Greenland ice sheet
Researchers from the United States and the United Kingdom have recorded a sharp acceleration in the rate of formation, total length and volume of large fractures in the Greenland ice sheet between 2016 and 2021, TASS reports citing press office of the UK's Durham University.

In some regions of its ice sheet, the volume of affected sections of glaciers increased by 25% in five years.
"Changes in crevasse volume correlate strongly with antecedent discharge changes, indicating that the acceleration of ice flow in Greenland forces significant increases in crevassing on a timescale of less than five years," the press office quoted university researcher Tom Chudley as saying.
Chudley and his colleagues made this discovery while studying a large set of three-dimensional relief maps of Greenland produced by three WorldView satellites and the GeoEye-1 probe as part of the ArcticDEM project. This initiative was launched by the US government in 2015 to regularly produce high-quality maps of glacier heights in the Arctic, using special algorithms that combine and compare images of the same polar regions from different satellites.
Climatologists say that thanks to the high resolution of satellites on these maps, it is possible to analyze objects several meters across and determine their approximate volume and shape. The researchers used this opportunity to assess how many large fractures are present in the Greenland ice sheet and how their size, volume and position have changed over five years of observations.
The scientists' calculations showed that the total volume of cracks in the island's ice sheet has increased by about 5% over the past five years, but climatologists have recorded dramatic changes in their distribution in some coastal regions of glaciers located off the southeastern coast of Greenland. The volume of large fractures in local ice deposits has increased by 25% in five years, accompanied by a dramatic acceleration of ice mass movement in the same regions of the island.
This rapid increase in the volume and size of cracks in recent years has been partially offset by the fact that Jakobshavn Glacier, located off the western coast of the island, temporarily slowed its movement in 2016-2021, reducing the number and volume of cracks in its thickness by 14%. Its speed has increased in recent years, which is expected to further accelerate fracture formation and further destabilize the Greenland ice sheet. This may accelerate sea level rise, the scientists concluded.·
About Greenland's glaciers
For many years, climate satellites have recorded a sharp acceleration in the melting of Greenland's glaciers. On average, the rate of volume loss has increased about fourfold since the beginning of the century, and in total the island's ice cap has lost more than five trillion tons of mass during this time. The rapid rise in temperatures on the island means that during warm seasons, huge icebergs weighing billions of tons periodically break off from the Greenland ice sheet.
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