Global Warming

Huge Greenland Glacier Crumbling Into The Sea

A massive Greenland glacier holding enough ice to raise world sea levels around 18 inches is retreating from the frigid island's coastline, and its leading edge is tumbling into the North Atlantic, researchers report.

The Zachariae Isstrom Glacier has been in an accelerated retreat since 2012 and is now losing its ice at the rate of more than five billions tons a year, they say.

The glacier is now breaking up and calving high volumes of icebergs into the ocean, which will result in rising sea levels for decades to come.

Decades of progressively-rising air temperatures are melting the glacier's top, while currents of warming ocean water are compromising its underside.

Located in northeastern Greenland, the glacier has lost 95 percent of the ice shelf that previously worked to stabilize it, researchers say. Most of the reduction in Zachariae Isstrom's mass is from ice loss as the glacier calves off huge chunks of its forward end into the ocean.