NASA’s Oceans Melting Greenland (OMG) mission uses ships and planes to measure how ocean temperatures affect Greenland’s vast icy expanses. Jakobshavn Glacier, known in Greenlandic as Sermeq Kujalle, on Greenland’s central western side, has been one of the island’s largest contributor’s to sea level rise, losing mass at an accelerating rate.
In a new study, the OMG team found that between 2016 and 2017, Jakobshavn Glacier grew slightly and the rate of mass loss slowed down. They traced the causes of this thickening to a temporary cooling of ocean temperatures in the region.
Narrated by OMG Principal Investigator Josh Willis. Music: Rising Tides by Rainman [PRS] Complete transcript available. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Kathryn Mersmann
Oceanographer Josh Willis discusses the heat capacity of water, performs an experiment to demonstrate heat capacity using a water balloon and describes how water’s ability to store heat affects Earth’s climate.
