Steenstrup Glacier is located in SE Greenland and has been considered stable, therefore did not receive scrutiny from researchers for that reason. However, a new scientific paper found that between 2018 and 2021, the glacier was found to have retreated 4.34 miles, thinned by 20%, doubled its ice discharge into the ocean, and accelerated velocity by 300%. The culprit is warming deep welling waters intruding into the Arctic from the Atlantic Ocean.
The change is unprecedented among all Greenland glaciers that end at the ocean. The findings put Steenstrups in the top 10% of Greenland glaciers, contributing the most to sea level rise. Sea level rise threatens the coastlines of the world.
From the Ohio State presser:
Over the past few decades, much of this loss has been attributed to accelerated ice discharge from tidewater glaciers, glaciers that make contact with the ocean. Many glaciologists believe that this recent uptick in ice discharge can be explained by the intrusion of warming waters that are being swept from the Atlantic into Greenlandic fjords—critical oceanic gateways that can impact the stability of local glaciers and the health of polar ecosystems.
The research team aimed to test that theory by examining a glacier in the southeastern region of Greenland called K.I.V Steenstrups Nordre Bræ, an entity more colloquially known as the Steenstrup Glacier.
"Up until 2016, there was nothing to suggest Steenstrup was in any way interesting," said Thomas Chudley, lead author of the study, who completed this work as a research associate at the Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center. Chudley is now a Leverhulme research fellow at Durham University in the UK.
"There were plenty of other glaciers in Greenland that had retreated dramatically since the 1990s and increased their contribution to sea level rise, but this really wasn't one of them."
As far as scientists knew, Steenstrup had not only been stable for decades but was generally insensitive to the rising temperatures that had destabilized so many other regional glaciers, likely because of its isolated position in shallow waters.
It wasn't until Chudley and his colleagues compiled observational and modeling data from previous remote sensing analyses on the glacier that the team realized Steenstrup was likely experiencing melt due to anomalies in deeper Atlantic water.
"Our current working hypothesis is that ocean temperatures have forced this retreat," Chudley said. "The fact that the glacier's velocity has quadrupled in just a few years opens up new questions about how fast large ice masses can really respond to climate change."
The Denmark Strait connects the Greenland Sea in the Arctic Ocean and the Irminger Sea, part of the Atlantic Ocean. The glacier has an impressive 295-foot-tall ice wall. The glacier consists of two parallel ice streams, the Northern and Southern Steenstrup. The study's focus was the northern (KIV Steenstrup Nordre Bræ) ice stream. The authors acknowledge this is likely occurring in more than one Greenland fjord.
This stunning retreat by warm ocean upwelling raises concerns about West Antarctica—particularly Thwaites and other vulnerable glaciers in the Amundsen Sea Embayment melting from below.
Speaking of Antarctica, it took five months for any publication other than Daily Kos to report on Iceberg B22a, which broke away from the sea mountain it had been lodged on for twenty years in front of the Doomsday Glaciers tongue. The mainstream news has not reported the fuckery at the southern polar ice cap. Even NASA did not report on Thwaites Iceberg B22a until April 13, 2023.
“It would be some consolation for the feebleness of our selves and our works if all things should perish as slowly as they come into being; but as it is, increases are of sluggish growth, but the way to ruin is rapid.” Stoic philosopher Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Meanwhile, in the USA:
Citing Neo-Nazi Plots Against The Grid, States Pass Laws Meant To Thwart Climate Protests
In just the past month, lawmakers in Utah, Georgia and Tennessee have passed legislation granting police broad new authority to charge anyone who interferes with or disrupts the operations of power plants and pipelines with felonies carrying years in prison.
Over the past five years, nearly two dozen states have enacted similar bills, all following the format of a model bill right-wing operatives working with fossil fuel lobbyists designed to thwart future climate protests like those against the Dakota Access oil pipeline.
Early on, proponents were explicit about targeting environmentalists and community activists, pushing measures that threatened to bankrupt small-town Ohio churches whose parishioners took part in demonstrations with legal fines or throw a Louisiana grandmother in prison for three years for stepping on a petrochemical company’s land to visit the mass grave containing her enslaved ancestors. It obviously proved controversial: The Buckeye State passed its law, but the governor vetoed the Bayou State bill.
This time, however, state lawmakers are pitching the harsh new penalties in their bills as the key to going after a different kind of political target: far-right extremists.
It’s a rhetorical shift playing off a recent resurgence of neo-Nazi plots against the power grid, but free-speech advocates and extremism experts told HuffPost that prosecutors remain far more likely to use the statutes to charge left-wing and environmental activists.