A new study reveals how responsive the Greenland ice sheet is to climate change – more so than models predict.
A new study reveals how responsive the Greenland ice sheet is to climate change – more so than models predict. Methane has been detected at retreating glacier margins worldwide, but this is the first time that a study has investigated the margin of an entire ice sheet.
In the new paper, an international collaboration including Charles University, Czechia, and University of Oulu, presents evidence linking widespread methane (CH4) release – a potent greenhouse gas – from beneath the Greenland Ice Sheet to an episode of warming around 4,000 years ago, known as the Holocene Thermal Maximum.
The scientists collected samples from a 2000 km-long transect of the western margin of the Greenland Ice Sheet and used stable isotope analysis and radiocarbon dating to constrain the origin and age of the methane exported by emerging subglacial meltwater. They found the methane was 1500-4500 years old, produced biologically by anaerobic microbes that metabolise decaying organic matter in sediments beneath the ice sheet, where oxygen is limited.
Read More at: University of Oulu
This international project drilled over 1200 m through to the bed of the Greenland ice sheet to collect basal sediment cores and samples of organic carbon along with the methane producing microbes that metabolize it. Photo Credit: Alun Hubbard / Oulu University)
