What's Hidden Under Greenland's Ice?

Roland Piquepaille writes "Ice has covered Greenland for millions of years. So what's hidden under this ice cap? Mountains and valleys? Rivers and lakes? Of course, we might know it sooner than we would have liked if the ice covering Greenland continues to melt. But researchers from Ohio State University have decided that they wanted to know it next year and have developed a radar to reveal views of land beneath polar ice. Their first tests of this new radar, which helps them to catch 3-D images of the ground under the ice, took place in May 2006. The next images will be shot in April 2007. Here are some images of the new GISMO device and what it can do."

Comments

Ehm

[Anonymous Coward]

shouldn't any mountain ranges be pretty well worn down by now? Scandinavia doesn't have any huge mountains due to the ice ages, so I'd imagine that the same goes for Greenland.

What I think would be cool under Greenland

[Jon Luckey]

This:

The effect was that of a Cyclopean city of no architecture known to man or to human imagination, with vast aggregations of night-black masonry embodying monstrous perversions of geometrical laws. There were truncated cones, sometimes terraced or fluted, surmounted by tall cylindrical shafts here and there bulbously enlarged and often capped with tiers of thinnish scalloped disks; and strange beetling, table-like constructions suggesting piles of multitudinous rectangular slabs or circular plates or five-pointed stars with each one overlapping the one beneath. There were composite cones and pyramids either alone or surmounting cylinders or cubes or flatter truncated cones and pyramids, and occasional needle-like spires in curious clusters of five. All of these febrile structures seemed knit together by tubular bridges crossing from one to the other at various dizzy heights, and the implied scale of the whole was terrifying and oppressive in its sheer gigantism. The general type of mirage was not unlike some of the wilder forms observed and drawn by the arctic whaler Scoresby in 1820, but at this time and place, with those dark, unknown mountain peaks soaring stupendously ahead, that anomalous elder-world discovery in our minds, and the pall of probable disaster enveloping the greater part of our expedition, we all seemed to find in it a taint of latent malignity and infinitely evil portent.

Likely? No... but if it happened it might make certian people reconsider that greenhouse gas/climate change tradeoff issue. :)

Warmer air might mean more snow.

[Kadin2048]

That doesn't really reassure me. Anyone who's lived in a particularly cold climate can tell you that precipitation increases as it gets warmer (given sufficiently cold temperatures), and tends to lessen as it gets very cold, due to the air's inability to hold as much moisture at lower temperatures; it could be that the increased depth of the ice pack in the interior is a direct result of increased snowfall due to warmer atmospheric conditions. That would be rather consistent with increased snowfall in the interior (hence deepening of the ice) and melting at the edges.

I don't know for sure if that's the case, but the fact that the ice depth is increasing in the interior doesn't necessarily refute climate change. It's certainly not an open-and-shut case.

Re:That's why they called it GREENland

[RodgerDodger]

The medieval warming period followed the so-called "mini-Ice Age" of the 12th century. During this period, the Black Forest in Europe shrunk to smaller than its current size - all due to people cutting down wood for fires. These fires significantly increased the carbon in the atmosphere. The planet warmed up as a result, slowly but at a sustained rate for over a century. The Black Forest later grew back and the carbon was taken out of the air.

It's probably...

[Panaqqa]

a lot like the terrain on Baffin Island, another arctic island which underwent intense glaciation in the last ice age - and emerged from it due to slightly milder climate. This picture of Mount Asgard on Baffin Island is likely quite representative of what would be under Greenland's ice. Minus, of course, the moss/lichen/pioneer plants.

Re:Nice. Now if only...

[MaWeiTao]

Maybe that is why atleast in the North-Eastern part of USA, we have had a wet Christmas instead of a white one.

Having grown up in the Northeast I'd like to know when it is that we've ever had a white Christmas. In fact, a few years ago I read something about how contrary to the expectation that we should get snow on Christmas very few parts of the country actually see snow on a consistent basis for the holiday. I don't remember the percentage exactly, but it was quite high.

Just give them a section or author setting

[Rob Simpson]

Make it so they can be disabled on the "Customize Stories on the Homepage" part of the user prefs. Seriously, how many Piquepaille blogspams are there compared to Apache stories? Personally, I'd leave them on, but the icon or whatever would be a warning - even though there's usually no substance to the "story", sometimes there are worthwhile posts within the comments. Hopefully, this would also improve said comments, since complaints about these blog posts would no longer be justified.

In other news: Greenland ice cap beer launched

[gnalle]

People taste Greenland beer in Copenhagen. The new beer is said to taste cleaner and smoother. A brewery in Greenland is producing beer using water melted from the ice cap of the vast Arctic island. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/5234194.stm