A Cool Blob and Lowering Sea Levels
Put Iceland Back in the News
Some 10 percent of Iceland is covered by glaciers. As elsewhere in the world, those glaciers began to melt signicantly in the latter decades of the 20th century. en, mysteriously, the rate of ice loss slowed starting in 2011. Writing in Geophysical Research Letters, a team led by Brice Noël (Utrecht University, Netherlands) believes they have identied why. Blame it on the “cool blob” - a stretch of water in the North Atlantic that, for unknown reasons, is just unusually cold. While Iceland’s glaciers continue to melt, the cool blob has cut the melt rate in half.
Even with a lowered rate of glacial melting, Iceland is still feeling the eects of less ice on its landscape. Huge glaciers put considerable weight on the land they cover. Take away that weight and the land begins to rebound or to rise, and the ocean around it pulls back because of gravitational eects. Per orvardur Arnason (University of Iceland) that is happening in Iceland. And as a result, rather than facing rising sea levels as in other parts of the world, Iceland is experiencing lowered sea levels. Although the rise of the land would seem to be minuscule (between 1.7 and 4 centimeters a year), it has been adding up and now has produced noticeable eects, such as making the journey of shing ships more treacherous in shallower waters. Eventually, access into and out of some shing ports could be disrupted.