Research on climate change on melting glaciers

The pure ice cubes that you often put in a glass to drink, look quite solid. But if you had a really big, really big round made of ice, it could actually melt slowly and become a glacier. Gravity will pull it downwards.

Fiammetta Straneo, an oceanographer, and head of the research team, works at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, in Massachusetts, USA.

Movable ice cubes, called glaciers. They are located in very cold areas, or very high places like on the mountains or near the Arctic and Antarctic. You may have seen pictures of glaciers from Glacier National Park, in Montana, USA. Or maybe you know someone who made a journey to the cold Alaska.

Scientists are interested in glaciers, because these blocks can be used to study global warming. Every year, humans are emitting a lot of carbon dioxide into the earth's atmosphere, by doing things like burning coal to get electricity. This CO ₂ is like a giant blanket in the air, which helps to retain heat and warm the whole planet.

Most warming events have occurred in the cold regions of the Earth, so there are melting glaciers. Researchers are trying to study glaciers before they disappear.

Scientists are interested in glaciers that flow into the ocean, just as you see on your journey to Alaska. When glaciers melt, ice will turn into water and flow into the ocean. This makes the sea level rise. Researchers worry that glaciers that melt in a single day may raise sea levels, leading to many coastal cities, like Miami and New Orleans, that may be submerged.

But glaciers respond to warmer temperatures in different ways. While some glaciers begin to melt, they increase their movement speed, and the flow is faster to reach the big sea, then the remaining glaciers melt quickly, but then the process again. Melting is slowed.

Ice scientists do a lot of work in Greenland, an island located in the North Atlantic Ocean, between the United States and Europe. Greenland is the world's largest island, and has about 80% of its surface covered with ice. If all the ice above Greenland melted, the sea level would rise by about 6,096 m (more than 6m) worldwide.

This will not happen overnight, but some Greenland glaciers have been active in recent times. One of the fastest moving glaciers in the world, called Jakobshavn (pronounced YAH-kubs-hav 'un), is located on Greenland's west coast.

When the glacier enters the oceans, it melts and emits large volumes of ice mountains. In 1912, an iceberg broke from the Jakobshavn glacier, breaking and sinking the Titanic.

Currently, Jakobshavn glacier has emitted more icebergs than before. Scientists don't know why, but in the late 1990s glaciers began to move faster toward the sea. It started to melt more and thinner. Scientists think: very quickly, Jakobshavn glacier will completely stop flowing into the ocean and instead, it will seep back into the soil. Glaciers ' are in a cycle of death ', according to Ian Howat, a glacier researcher working at Ohio State University, in Columbus, USA.

Every summer, scientists visit Jakobshavn glacier to measure how it is changing. They put devices on the ice, to be able to measure the flow rate, and collect images of glacier changes from year to year. The researchers placed seismic stations on the ice, to measure tremors in the glacier until the ice sheet completely broke. Scientists call this phenomenon ' icy earthquakes. '

Researchers also want to see what happens when the ice on the top of the glacier melts. In the heat of the summer sun rays, large, newly melted ice pools appear on Greenland's surface. In some places, cracks widen and water is sucked down through the remaining ice like a whirlpool flowing down the sewer of your home bathtub.

In 2008, researchers worked at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in Pasadena, California, USA, wanting to find out where the melted ice is going. So they dropped 90 rubber duckies, which are often used in baths, into Jakobshavn glacier drains. Scientists hope the duckies can appear downstream, in the ocean below the glacier. But they didn't have a chance to see them again.

The ice is cold and the water is warm: Researchers are studying glaciers located east of Greenland, in a glacier called Helheim. Like the west brother, recently the Helheim glacier began to flow faster. But unlike Jakobshavn, the flow of the glacier Helheim finally slowed down.

Glacier Helheim flows into the ocean through a narrow canyon, full of water, called the fjord (fjord). Over the past few years, a group of researchers have been visiting the fjord. Fiammetta Straneo, an oceanographer, and head of the research team, works at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, in Massachusetts, USA.

' We are trying to understand what factors help control the melting of ice' in glaciers, Straneo explained. So she hired a local fishing boat to take her to the fjord. Now she releases long cables into the water to measure the temperature of the ocean.

When she got closer to where the glacier met the sea, she realized: this place has a lot of icebergs, very dangerous in the boat. Therefore, Straneo hired a helicopter to fly to the end of the glacier. She dropped many tools into the water in the fjord to measure the temperature again.

Straneo discovered that the fjord waters are one of the warmest places in Greenland. Warm currents seem to come from hundreds of miles off Greenland and flow into the fjord. When glaciers melt into seawater, ice will melt faster if it is hot.'This is like when you put a block of ice in a hot tub ', she said.

As the temperature of the earth continues to rise, these hot mounds will also be only slightly warmer. So scientists will be able to come to Greenland in the coming summers. Only then, do they better understand the glaciers and what will happen to these glaciers, in the process of climate change.

Science and art meet: When James Balog, grew up in northern New Jersey, he not only had a collection of rocks and minerals like many other children. He also knew that the rocks under his feet were formed during the process when Europe and North America separated from each other hundreds of millions of years ago.

Today, Balog is a scientist, he likes to explore himself. He is a photographer, with the latest project "what will our planet be like when glaciers are disappearing" . He put cameras on glaciers and other freezing places to take landscape photos. A few months or a few years later, the project members came back to take the camera and assemble the photos according to the time lapse dramatically, the film shows the rapid melting of these glaciers or the Other glaciers are melting slowly. Right now, the team has mounted 31 cameras in those places with high mountains such as Himalaya, Greenland, Iceland, Montana and Alaska.

Movies are also a strong witness, explaining how climate change affects the planets. The features that were available in the tape for centuries disappeared in the blink of an eye.'The whole thing is motivated because I want to be able to tell my daughter: I have seen this icy area, I have been in those places, and I have done the best that I can to, According to Balog, currently living in Boulder, Colorado, USA, along with Emily: 9 years old and Simone: 22 years old.

Scientific nature: I know what I am talking about, because I have a master's degree in geomorphology. This means I have gone through several years of graduate study, specifically studying the geology and dynamics of the Earth.

Artistic nature: I have always been interested in the natural world. My picture book includes: working on the world's largest trees and the relationship between chimpanzees and humans.

So, how to get both the scientific and artistic nature of the picture book? ' The most important thing is that the photographer must be curious, must have imagination and must be competent, ' says Balog. ' I also think that society has a broader view that people are more prone to confusion when having less natural contact, when they forget the connections with what really gives us life. . '

So, immediately turn off the computer, he said, and go outside to play and explore.