Map of Greenland elevation: Ice covered areas that sit below sea level are marked in blue. Smaller images show individual glaciers and submarine trenches. Source: Morlighem et al. ( 2014). | The Greenland ice sheet may be more vulnerable to climate change than previously thought, scientists reported in a Nature Geoscience paper on Sunday.
The team of US scientists discovered deep channels extending horizontally below the surface of the Greenland sheet, which mean large parts of the glaciers lie on land that's below sea level.
Just like in West Antarctic glaciers, warm water coming into contact with the edge of the glacier forms vast pools under the ice sheet, melting it from the bottom up, the paper explains. |