This week scientists released some new pictures of retreating glaciers in Greenland, comparing them for the first time with pictures taken about 80 years ago. The top image taken in summer 2013 shows ice retreat af about two miles compared to the bottom picture taken in summer 1935.
These pictures were taken in the vicinity of Sukkertoppen Ice Cap in southwest Greenland. While the alignment of the pair here is not perfect, you get the idea by comparing shoreline landscape features.
Researcher Anders Bjørk of the Natural History Museum of Denmark has been re-photographing Greenland's retreating glaciers. Studying old photographs of the glaciers helped reveal a previously unknown period of rapid glacial melt in Greenland between 1900 and 1930, a time before satellite observations began.
He presented his research alongside new findings from NASA revealing how meltwater moves beneath the ice of Greenland's glaciers at the American Geophysical Union meeting on December 15 in San Francisco.
You can read more about the research project at NASA Earth Observatory and at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences.
Comments