Glaciers don’t just melt from the top, where they’re exposed to air – some are melting from the bottom, where seawater is lapping away at them. This type of melting can be hard to study, since scientists can’t exactly get down there. But now, researchers have used robotic kayaks to monitor plumes of freshwater coming from beneath glaciers, and found that they’re melting much faster than we thought.
Traditionally, these models have suggested that this ambient melting would be relatively minor compared to discharge-driven melting, which occurs from the glacier’s surface where ice meets air and includes chunks calving off. But the new study found ambient melting to be much higher than the models anticipated – up to 100 times higher, in fact.
“With the kayaks, we found a surprising signal of melting: Layers of concentrated meltwater intruding into the ocean that reveal the critical importance of a process typically neglected when modeling or estimating melt rates,” says Rebecca Jackson, lead author of the study.
https://newatlas.com/environment/robotic-kayaks-glaciers-melting-faster/