Welcome to our Saturday line-up fellow progressives and curious lurkers! We’re kicking off a climate and environment blogathon under the ClimateActionHub page. There will be lots more talented, passionate writers contributing including the always awesome MeteorBlades, popular diarists like BÉSAME, Bill McKibben, and many others.
First up, bad news, a large crack has already opened up early in the spring in one of Greenland’s vast ice sheets, causing concern among cryo-scientists. The ice sheet faces almost due north and stands between the open Arctic Ocean and the Petermann Glacier, a vast slowly flowing river of ice fed by ice and snow falling further inland on the frozen region:
The NASA pictures make clear that a significant new rift has opened near the center of the glacier’s floating ice shelf — an unusual location that raises questions about how it formed. Moreover, this crack is not so distant from another much wider and longer crack that has been slowly extending toward the shelf’s center from its eastern side wall. If the two cracks were to intersect, then a single break would run across more than half of the ice shelf. That might, in turn, cause the piece to begin to break away.
Glaciers may look solid and unmoving, but their defining characteristic is they flow, very slowly, often carving channels through solid rock over eons and dragging large boulders along for the ride. But in a warming environment, more and more meltwater forms and can accumulate underneath the ice, where it acts to lubricate the base, allowing the icy overburden to move faster and faster. This process would move ice farther out onto open water where under the right conditions, large bergs would calve off in greater number and larger sizes. This process may be underway all across Greenland’s coastline due to rising global temperatures combined with the concentrating effect of polar amplification on the Arctic.
There’s a blogathon guide, and Washington Post science reporter Chris Mooney explains the science behind the Petermann Glacier and global warming in a video report, below the fold.
SciCli Blogathon: April 22-28, 2017 (all times are Pacific)
Support the Daily Kos SciCli blogathon during the April 22-28 week of action promoting the April 29 People’s Climate March with stories on how science and climate change are affecting our lives and our planet.
For background on the SciCli Blogathon and the Week of action visit boatsie’s diary.
Sign up for the Washington, D.C. march or find a march near you.
If you’d like to march with other readers of Daily Kos, visit Connect! Unite! Act! (7:30 AM Pacific) for march locations. Send Navajo a Kos mail or leave a message in the comments.
On April 29, let’s march for jobs, justice, and the climate!
2:30 pm: DarkSyde
5:00 pm: Meteor Blades
2:30 pm: citisven
5:00 pm: boatsie
2:30 pm: Pakalolo
5:00 pm: 2thanks
1:45 pm: samanthab
5:00 pm: Besame
2:30 pm: Dartagnan
5:00 pm: peregrine kate
2:30 pm: Bill McKibbon
5:00 pm: WarrenS
2:30 pm: Tamar
5:00 pm: annieli