Greenland

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Photo of Dogs Goes Viral, and Sparks a Conversation

They're walking through meltwater in Greenland

(Newser) - It's no wonder the photo went viral: The sled dogs appear to be walking on water. The story behind the June 13 image is making the rounds as well. It was taken by Danish scientist Steffen Olsen in northwest Greenland, where the dogs were traversing an ice sheet roughly...

Big News on Famously Thinning Glacier: 'We Didn't Believe It'

But scientists aren't too excited about sudden thickening of Greenland's Jakobshavn

(Newser) - "At first, we didn't believe it." Indeed, the data presented to NASA glaciologist Ala Khazendar and colleagues regarding Jakobshavn Glacier was almost unbelievable. For 20 years, Jakobshavn has been Greenland's fastest-thinning and fastest-flowing glacier. Its thickness shrank 500 feet from 2003 to 2016. But since then,...

Greenland: Melting Glaciers Open Up Vast Sand Deposits
Greenland: Melting Glaciers
Open Up Vast Sand Deposits
in case you missed it

Greenland: Melting Glaciers Open Up Vast Sand Deposits

Mining sand could deliver huge economic boost

(Newser) - In a strangely positive twist to climate change, a new study finds that Greenland could become a major exporter of sand as its glaciers disappear into the sea. As global temperatures rise, the island's vast ice sheet is rapidly melting away, and large amounts of sediments are being washed...

'It's Too Late': Greenland's Ice Melt Will Raise Sea Levels

'The only question is: How severe does it get?'

(Newser) - Glacial ice on Greenland's coasts is calving into the sea , but that's just the tip of the iceberg, so to speak. By 2012, ice loss on Greenland's massive ice sheet had accelerated to a rate nearly four times what it was in 2003, and it may have...

Giant Impact Crater Reported in Unusual Place
Under Greenland's Ice,
a Surprise Find
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

Under Greenland's Ice, a Surprise Find

Scientists think they've found one of the world's biggest impact craters

(Newser) - Scientists think they've found one of the world's biggest impact craters, but confirmation is tricky given its location—under a glacier in Greenland. In the journal Science Advances , researchers make the case that a meteorite perhaps a mile wide slammed into Greenland somewhere between 12,000 and 3...

'Scary' First Hits Arctic's Thickest Ice

Oldest section of sea ice has already shattered 2 times this year

(Newser) - Scientists called it "the last ice area," believing the oldest and thickest section of Arctic sea ice north of Greenland would be the last to remain as our planet warms. Turns out, it's already broken up twice this year, reports the Guardian . More than 13 feet thick...

Greenland Villagers Flee as Giant Iceberg Approaches

The giant hunk of ice could cause flooding as it approaches the town of Innaarsuit

(Newser) - A huge iceberg heading for a tiny Greenland town has sent villagers fleeing. Per Newsweek , the berg is so big it found itself lodged on the sea floor just beside the town of Innaarsuit, where the around 170 residents fear flooding could occur as chunks fall into the sea. The...

Tsunami Sweeps Away Homes in Greenland

4 missing in remote settlement

(Newser) - Some of the most remote settlements on the planet have been hit by a tsunami that followed a 4.1 magnitude earthquake. Four people are missing in the village of Nuugaatsiaq on Greenland's northwest coast, where the wave swept their home into the ocean, the CBC reports. Some 11...

These Rocks May Hold Oldest Evidence of Life on Earth

Researchers say Greenland stromatolites are 3.7B years old

(Newser) - Researchers claim to have discovered evidence of life on Earth more than 200 million years before the oldest known fossils, the BBC reports. A layer of permanent snow melted away last spring on Greenland's Isua supracrustal belt, revealing a series of wavy peaks called stromatolites in the 3.7...

Danger Lurks in Abandoned Army Base Buried Beneath the Ice

Climate change could bring decades-old pollutants to the surface

(Newser) - Fifty years ago, the US Army abandoned a secretive nuclear facility built 40 feet below a Greenland ice sheet, Science reports. It left radioactive water, diesel fuel, human waste, and possibly PCBs buried with Camp Century—it believed forever. "The phrase they used was that the waste would be...

5 Countries May Make Seniors Go Back to School

To keep their skills current and the Nordic region a major player in global arena

(Newser) - A recently published 36-page report outlining proposals to improve working life in the five Nordic countries—Denmark, Iceland, Finland, Sweden, and Norway—has a proposal that Quartz says contains a "startling" word: "mandatory." Poul Nielson, a Danish politician given the task last year of preparing a labor...

14-Year-Old Adventurer Aims to Make History With Triple Trek

Jade Hameister departing for first leg of 'polar hat trick'

(Newser) - Jade Hameister might soon become the youngest person to travel to the ends of the Earth. The 14-year-old from Melbourne, Australia, is about to embark on a three-week trek to the North Pole that will see her skiing 140 miles across sea ice while pulling a sled that weighs as...

Greenland Is Getting Darker Before Our Very Eyes

The frosty island could soon be 10% darker than it is today

(Newser) - The white, reflective surface of Greenland's snowpack is getting darker and less reflective, all thanks to what the Christian Science Monitor calls "positive feedback loops"—the idea that a little bit of melting leads to more and faster melting. "We knew that these processes had been...

Study Shows Clouds Are Bad News for Greenland Ice Sheet

'This is something we have to get right if we want to predict the future'

(Newser) - There's a literal cloud hanging over the rapidly melting Greenland ice sheet. That's because a new study published Tuesday in Nature Communications reveals exactly how clouds are exacerbating the problem. Cloud cover over the ice sheet causes 56 billion tons of meltwater runoff every year, up to a...

Warming Arctic Is Big Trouble for Caribou in Unexpected Way

Mosquitoes are swarming earlier than ever, and they can kill calves

(Newser) - Global warming in the Arctic means earlier and more plentiful mosquitoes in Greenland, and that's bad news for the country's already shrinking caribou population, Alaska Dispatch News reports. A new study found that for every degree Celsius the temperature rises in Greenland, mosquitoes take 10% less time to...

All Antarctic Ice Would Melt If We Burned All Fossil Fuels

Seas could rise 160 feet: study

(Newser) - If we were to burn all of the planet's fossil fuel reserves, we would be saying goodbye to the entire Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets. That's the takeaway from an international study announced today, Reuters reports. "To be blunt: If we burn it all, we melt it...

Greenland's Vikings Weren't Farmers, They Were Walrus Hunters

They apparently had a lucrative ivory trade going on: researchers

(Newser) - For a long time, scientists wondered why Vikings settled in Greenland as farmers, since livestock doesn't thrive there and the growing season is truncated, notes Hakai Magazine . But while speculation as to why they eventually abandoned the island territory range from climate change to soil erosion , researchers now think...

Mystery of Vanishing Glacial Lakes Solved

Meltwater causes tension on lake bottoms, spawning hydrofractures

(Newser) - For years, scientists have known glacial lakes can rapidly empty themselves of billions of gallons of water—in at least one case, faster than the speed at which water flows over Niagara Falls. Now, they finally know how it's done. Researchers had guessed that the weight of the water...

Under Greenland's Ice: Soil Older Than Mankind

Land mass once home to forests

(Newser) - The soil under the highest point of the Greenland Ice Sheet, scientists have learned, is 2.7 million years old, LiveScience reports. In other words, the silt buried under thousands of feet of ice "has been preserved from beyond the dawn of humankind," says Paul Bierman, who determined...

Study Sinks One Titanic Iceberg Theory

1912 wasn't a year packed with huge crop of icebergs

(Newser) - The year the Titanic sank wasn't one with "an enormously large crop of icebergs" as has long been believed, according to new research. Researchers who analyzed Coast Guard data going back to 1900 found that 1912 had a relatively large but by no means exceptional number of icebergs...

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