Universidad de Concepción Metodología y Práctica Traducción II Inglés-Español

Facultad Humanidades y Arte Prof. Javier Bello C., Constanza Gerding S., Boris Pradel S.

Rain may be causing a worrying amount of ice to melt in Greenland

ENVIRONMENT, 7 March 2019
By Adam Vaughan

Rain is becoming more common across Greenland’s ice sheet and it may be playing an important role
in rising sea levels.

Greenland’s 660,000-square mile ice sheet contains enough fresh water to flood coastal cities around
the world. Warm air over the sheet is causing it to melt, but new work reveals that rainfall is also
causing more melting than previously thought.

An analysis of satellite and weather station records suggests that around 300 melt events in Greenland
between 1979 and 2012 were linked to rainfall. Over this time, rain-associated melting became twice
as frequent in summer, and three times as frequent in winter. Rain now appears to account for 28 per
cent of the ice sheet’s melt.

The analysis highlights an under-monitored area, says Robin Smith, at the University of Reading, UK,
who was not involved in the study. “It tells us that we need to pay more attention to all the processes,
and all the weather, all-year round, not just what’s obvious,” he said.

Nicholas Barrand, at the University of Birmingham, UK, says rainfall could have “profound effects” on
the density of Greenland’s snowpack, where meltwater goes, and the total amount of meltwater that
runs off the sheet into the sea. “Each of these make up the Greenland ice sheet’s contribution to global
sea-level rise, and will require close monitoring in the coming years,” he says.

Winter melting
Rain contributes to melting because it contains heat. It is becoming more common in Greenland due
to higher temperatures, and is increasingly falling further north, even during the winter in some areas.
When precipitation falls as rain, it causes some of Greenland’s ice sheet to be covered in ice rather
than snow. Come the summer, this ice reflects less of the sun’s energy, exacerbating summer melting.

Historically, Greenland’s melt season has run between May and August, but rainfall means melting is
now happening in winter too. “The rain events are extremely important because they are one of the
only triggers for melting in winter,” says Marco Tedesco, of Columbia University in New York, who was
involved in the analysis.

Warmer period
However, the team acknowledge that the period they studied was particularly warm. Natural
variability means the decades between 1979 and 2012 were hotter than average, on top of the long-
term trend of global warming, so are not necessarily a good guide to future melting

Jason Box at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland says that if the period had extended to
2017 the trend would not have been so strong. That’s because 2012, which saw intense melting in
Greenland, was the end of a string of years with increasing temperatures.

Rainfall’s role in Greenland’s melting ice sheet has ramifications not just for sea level rises, which still
need to be quantified, but for undertaking vital climate science too. Liz Thomas of the British Antarctic
Survey in Cambridge, UK, is heading to Greenland this summer to drill ice cores to study signs of
previous climate change. “From my prospective, new evidence of rain in the winter and increased
melting is alarming. Surface melt water will percolate through the ice and potentially wash away the
valuable climate proxies contained in ice cores,” she says.
Journal reference: The Cryosphere - Source: NewScientist https://www.newscientist.com/article/2195972-rain-may-be-causing-a-worrying-amount-of-ice-to-melt-in-
greenland/
 Universidad de Concepción Metodología y Práctica Traducción II Inglés-Español
Facultad Humanidades y Arte Prof. Javier Bello C., Constanza Gerding S., Boris Pradel S.

Taking the pulse of a shrinking glacier

Scientists in Chile hike over plains of snow to recover valuable data.
Patricio Segura Ortiz, 30 December 2011

The Exploradores Glacier in southern Chile is riven with cracks that form vertical cliffs of luminescent
blue and indigo ice. A constant sound of running water rises from the rivers snaking beneath the 20-
kilometre-long frozen mass that sweeps down from Mount San Valentín. The scene is stunning. And it
is also, slowly but surely, disappearing. To understand why this is happening, scientists must measure
the various processes that affect glaciers — not an easy task in this frozen wilderness. Installing and
maintaining satellite or radio transmission stations to send back data from this remote region is
considered too costly, so Chilean researchers must gather the valuable data in person.

Takane Matsumoto, a glaciologist at the Centre for Ecosystem Research in Patagonia (CIEP), based in
Coyhaique, Chile, journeys once a year to the Northern Patagonian Ice Field to check on the health of
the Exploradores glacier. He gathers information about temperature, precipitation, humidity and wind
speed from monitoring stations that he and Chile’s General Water Directorate have installed.
Matsumoto is trying to understand how weather conditions affect the rate at which the Exploradores
Glacier melts, and how the water released flows through and out of the bottom of the glacier. His work
is part of a bigger puzzle that researchers around the world are trying to solve: how quickly are glaciers
disappearing, and how will that affect local water resources.

Rapid retreat
About 75% of the world’s freshwater reserves are locked up in glaciers and ice sheets. The Patagonian
Ice Fields, covering about 14,000 square kilometres, are the world’s third-largest frozen landmass after
the continental glaciers of Antarctica and Greenland. About 100 glaciers in Chile are being monitored,
and Chile’s Centre for Scientific Studies (CECS) in Valdivia says that almost 90% are in retreat.

Earlier this year, glaciologist Neil Glasser of Aberystwyth University, UK, and colleagues estimated that
since 1870 the Northern Patagonian Icefield has lost more than 100 cubic kilometres of ice, and that
the Southern Patagonian Icefield had lost more than 500 cubic kilometres since 1650. In both case, the
melt rate had speeded up considerably in recent decades. The San Rafael Glacier, for example, about
55 kilometres southwest of Exploradores, has retreated 12 kilometres over the past 136 years, and is
still shrinking. And earlier this month, scientists from the CECS released time-lapse photos showing
that the Jorge Montt glacier in the Southern Patagonian Ice Field retreated by about one kilometre
between February 2010 and January 2011.

Matsumoto's journey to the Exploradores Glacier — one of the most accessible of Chile's glaciers —
involves a six-hour drive from Coyhaique to a small shelter about one kilometre from the glacier. Then
follows an hour’s walk through evergreen forests and over the moraine of rubble at the foot of the
glacier. Eventually, the sliding soil and rock gives way to the ice of the glacier itself. Over the course of
the day he downloads data from monitoring stations on to his laptop. One station records
precipitation; another, lying in the glacier's outlet stream, known locally as the Deshielo River, records
data about its melt water. The information about these "plains of snow", as the region’s original
settlers called them, "will help to understand the dynamics of the glacier and, by extension, how it
responds to climate change”, says Matsumoto. Matsumoto will return next year – when he fears the
Exploradores may have retreated further still.

Source: Nature https://www.nature.com/news/taking-the-pulse-of-a-shrinking-glacier-1.9713