A team of researchers set out in Greenland to examine the affect large glacial earthquakes has on their surroundings and their relation to a warming climate.
According to Live Science, authors of a study published in the journal Science ventured to Greenland to get a closer look at the Helheim Glacier. They chose the area because glacial earthquakes, a process also called "calving," has become increasingly common over the past 20 years.
"Our new understanding is a crucial step toward developing tools to remotely measure the mass loss that occurs when icebergs break off ice sheets," study co-author L. Mac Cathles, an assistant professor of earth and environmental sciences at the University of Michigan, said in a press release. "Combining field observations with laboratory measurements from scaled-model calving experiments provided insights into the dynamics of calving and glacial earthquakes that would not have otherwise been possible."
Part of the Greenland Ice Shelf, the Helheim Glacier has experienced 10 quakes during the scientists 55-day observation that began in Sept. 2013. Over that time, the quakes' magnitude peaked at 5.0 and the ice shelf retreated a full mile, Live Science reported.
"We both presented in the same session and realized that I was measuring in the lab a very similar signal to what Professor Murray was observing in the field," Cathles said. "That started a year-long collaboration in which the paper's co-authors talked regularly and collectively developed a model to explain the GPS observations and a deeper understanding of how glacial earthquakes are generated during an iceberg calving event."
