Glaciers are fast melting because of climate change and many of them are likely to collapse by the end of the century. We are unaware which of the glaciers would collapse at a rapid pace. But a new model developed by the scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, can well pinpoint which glaciers in the Arctic and Antarctic would slide downhill.
Published recently, the scientists talk of their model incorporating the effects of meltwater that percolates to the base of a glacier and lubricates its downhill flow. The model predicts that the most vulnerable glaciers are the thickest ones with a history of faster flow.
The U.S. National Science Foundation supports the research,
THE MODEL
May Jheng, who developed the model, said that the model suggests that thick and fast-flowing glaciers are more sensitive to lubrication than thin and slow glaciers. “The data from Greenland glaciers support this new finding, indicating that those fast and thick glacier beasts might be more unstable than we thought under global warming,” the scientist said.
