The rocky road to accurate sea-level predictions

– dirt and water under Greenland control future sea-level rise

The type of material present under glaciers has a big impact on how fast they slide towards the ocean. Scientists face a challenging task to acquire data of this under-ice landscape, let alone how to represent it accurately in models of future sea-level rise. “Choosing the wrong equations for the under-ice landscape can have the same effect on the predicted contribution to sea-level rise as a warming of several degrees,” says Henning Åkesson, who led a new published study on Petermann Glacier in Greenland.

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Swedish icebreaker Oden at the front of Petermann Ice Shelf in 2019. The new study shows that this ice shelf may break up if ocean warming continues. Photo: Martin Jakobsson.