Melting ice leads to gigantic glacial earthquakes

When Greenland’s melting glaciers lose large chunks of ice, it’s a violent process. Last year, for instance, scientists documented that gigantic glacial earthquakes are triggered by the rolling and tumbling of billion-ton icebergs as they break away and hit the glaciers to which they once belonged — hard.

But large masses of ice falling into the waters of Greenland’s fjords do something else, too. Depending on the mass of ice lost and the particular configuration of the water and the fjord into which it surges, these events can also create destructive tsunamis, albeit of a relatively small scale (compared with how big open ocean tsunamis can get). And now, a recent study has found that at least one notable Greenland glacier, these tsunamis appear to be getting worse as melting advances.

Martin P. Lüthi and Andreas Vieli of the University of Zurich in Switzerland studied what they call an “exceptionally well-documented” tsunami event that happened in July of 2014 in the fjord that terminates at the glacier Eqip Sermia. It’s one of the many large ocean-terminating glaciers of southwest Greenland and a popular tourist spot, since it has the advantage of being relatively close to the town of Ilulissat and reachable in a few hours by boat.

Read The Washington Post story - “As Greenland melts, this iconic glacier is creating terrifying tsunamis.”