Understanding how glaciers interact with the ocean is akin to piecing together a colossal jigsaw puzzle. And on various icebreaker expeditions to some of the most remote fjords in northern Greenland, colleagues and I have showed that the shape of the seafloor is one of the key pieces of that puzzle.
To understand why the seabed is so important, we have to look at the glaciers themselves and what is causing them to retreat or even disappear. The large glaciers that meet the ocean in Greenland and Antarctica balance their mass over time largely in pace with the climate. When it snows or rains they accumulate ice, and they lose ice to melting and calving – the process where chunks of ice break off and eventually melt away into the sea.
