Witnessing a glacier's race to the sea

[Dead_Parrot]

Video of retreating Alaskan ice is helping to quantify glacial contribution to sea-level rise.

A seven-year photographic record of the Columbia Glacier in Prince William Sound on Alaska’s south central Pacific coast has been made into a striking time-lapse video that documents the glacier's rapid ice discharge, and is helping researchers to understand how tidewater glaciers contribute to sea-level rise.

The video — assembled by the glaciologist William Pfeffer from the University of Colorado Boulder — shows large chunks of ice splitting off from the terminus of the main glacier and flowing out to sea. The glacier began to retreat rapidly in the early 1980s after being relatively stationary for well over a century. By spilling some 150 cubic kilometres of ice into the ocean, the glacier's terminus has retreated by roughly 20 kilometres.

Pfeffer began taking regular photos of the glacier’s terminus in 2004. He has now assembled hundreds of images into a movie to animate glacier flow, which he presented at the International Polar Year 2012 scientific meeting in Montreal, Canada, on 25 April.

Slippery slope
For a typical mountain glacier, the ice flows faster as it gets thicker and steeper. But the dynamics of glaciers that advance into coastal waters are different: as ice is pushed into the ocean, it thins and becomes buoyant, lifting the weight off its bottom face and reducing friction with the ground below.

More: http://www.nature.com/news/witnessing-a-glacier-s-race-to-the-sea-1.10534
Paper (sub): http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v482/n7386/full/nature10847.html

[pinto]

1. Great video / research piece.

[longship]

2. Isn't this James Balog?

As reported in his TED talk and the PBS NOVA episode, Extreme Ice?

Or is this a separate duplication of Balog's work?

Just asking because I think proper attribution is important.

[Dead_Parrot]

3. Dunno...

...Did he do a global inversion of Grace gravity field data for ice covered areas?

[longship]

4. No. Balog did the time lapse glacier photography

He actually built all the cameras individually. Please go to Balog's TED talk and watch the stunning Extreme Ice on PBS NOVA where he takes his global ice melting interest to serious extremes!