Greenland's glaciers are moving 30 percent faster - rediscovered photos

According to Nature: "Aerial photographs of Greenland from the 1930s — rediscovered in a castle outside Copenhagen — could provide a deeper understanding of the impact of climate change on the island's glaciers than the use of satellite data alone. Most studies of Greenland's glaciers have used satellite imagery collected since the 1960s. Anders Bjørk at the University of Copenhagen and his colleagues found the historical images of 132 Greenlandic glaciers and compared them with more recent satellite data. The comparison shows that, overall, glacier retreat over the past decade has been as vigorous as in a similar period of warming in the 1930s. However, glaciers with edges that reach the ocean tended to retreat more rapidly in the 2000s than in the 1930s, whereas those terminating on land regressed faster 80 years ago than in the 2000s."

According to Benjamin Smith, a University of Washington researcher reported in yahoo news, "The ice losses of the last decade or so largely has wiped out the gains of the midcentury cool period. The current loss of ocean-terminating glaciers is a problem because it is the major contributor to sea level rise, according. Although recent melting has outpaced the 1930s melting, the patterns of melt are similar, Smith says. "This indicates that the retreat in the 2000s was a typical response of the ice sheet to warmer air and ocean temperatures, and that future warming events can be expected to have similar consequences," he wrote.

Recent images reveal that Greenland's glaciers are moving 30 percent faster than they were a decade ago.