Greenland's Fastest Glacier Breaks Records, Moving More Than 150 Feet Per Day

Greenland's Fastest Glacier Breaks Records

Whoa there glacier.

New research out of the University of Washington and German Aerospace Center have pegged Greenland's Jakobshavn Glacier as the fastest in the country, moving at 10.5 miles per year, or about 150 feet per day. The study also says the glacier, which many believe produced the infamous iceberg that led to the sinking of the Titanic, has singlehandedly contributed at least one millimeter to global sea level rise between 2000 and 2011.

These record speeds, which are nearly three times faster than in the 1990s, can be attributed to widespread warming in the Arctic, which has caused the glacier to thin and produce more and more icebergs that threaten shipping routes, the paper states. The study was published in February in The Cryosphere, an open-access journal of the European Geosciences Union.

You can take a look at the full study here [PDF].

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