Glaciers Morph Lickety-Split as Climate Changes

Glaciers Morph Lickety-Split as Climate Changes

Arctic glaciers grew rapidly in response to sudden climate change8,200 years ago, a new study finds.

The study suggests that ice sheets such as those covering Greenland can quickly react to short-term climate shifts, said lead researcherNicolás Young, a postdoctoral researcher at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. "Ice sheets are very sensitive to modest changes in temperature," Young told LiveScience. "You don't need thousands of years of increasing or decreasing temperatures. A really quick temperature change will also trigger a response."

The climate switch investigated by Young and his co-authors is a brief cooling period that lasted only 150 years, with temperatures dropping 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit (3 degrees Celsius) in just 20 years.

During the cold snap, called the 8.2-ka event, galloping glaciers on Canada's Baffin Island descended from the mountains and extended tongues from remnants of the Laurentide ice sheet, report Young and his colleagues from the University at Buffalo in New York.

http://news.yahoo.com/glaciers-morph-lickety-split-climate-changes-180559421.html