November/December 2007
Postglacial Rebound
Better measurements of ice loss.
By David Talbot
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Earth monitor: A one-meter-tall GPS station sunk in bedrock near Ilulissat, Greenland, detects how the earth’s crust moves as the island’s massive ice sheet slides and melts.
Credit: Thomas Nylen, UNAVCO |
The effort to determine how fast the ice sheets that blanket Greenland and Antarctica are melting is complicated by something called "postglacial rebound." As the earth's crust is relieved of its millennia-long burden of ice, it recovers its original shape. The rebound of the bedrock underlying the ice can confuse measurements of the ice's thickness and mass.
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Massachusetts Institute of Technology