FROZEN WARNINGS: Greenland’s glacier slowdown is a global red flag

Srinagar, Jul 8: In the faraway Greenland, the Jakobshavn Glacier, once the world’s fastest-moving glacier, is slowing down, while here, thousands of kilometres away, glaciers too are showing alarming signs of shrinking.

What is happening in Greenland isn’t isolated but a planetary message.

While the world is trying to take rising temperatures in stride, the world's glaciers are sending out warning signs.

A recent study by Vilnius University of Lithuania came up with astounding facts on how the retreating glaciers are re-redrawing habitats, destabilising new water systems and changing climate worldwide.

Scientists have been monitoring glacial movement through advanced satellite technology to examine the way the ice behemoths are reacting to global warming.

Their work has ominous implications for regions like Kashmir, which is supported by over 18,000 glaciers that supply water to rivers on which lakhs of people of the region depend.

“Glaciers are not fixed, frozen bodies of ice. They are dynamic, sensitive, and changing,” says Laurynas Jukna in a report, ‘Tracking Ice, Tracking Change: Glaciers as Climate Sensors’ of the Institute of Geosciences, Vilnius University.

With his colleague Elzė Buslavičiūtė, Jukna investigated the glaciers from remote sensing observations gathered in space, this time for Greenland, which has the second-largest ice sheet on the planet.

Although Kashmir is as far from the icy shore of the ‘Land of the Midnight Sun’ as it is from any other region of the world, researchers say that the patterns that are unfolding are a mirror of the processes unfolding in relative tranquility across the Himalayas often referred to as the ‘Third Pole’ because of the huge ice deposits.

As per the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), all the glaciers in the world lost 273 billion tonnes of ice on average every year between 2000 and 2023, sufficient to cover the sea and approximately 0.75 mm every year.

In 2024 alone, the glaciers lost a whopping 450 billion tonnes of ice.

In Greenland, most of the melting has occurred where glaciers like Jakobshavn, which were once some of the fastest-moving in the world, have both seen rapid flow and, more recently, abrupt deceleration.

The Jakobshavn Glacier drains around 6.5 percent of Greenland’s ice sheet and calves around 10 percent of all calved icebergs along the shoreline of Greenland, depositing billions of tonnes of ice into the ocean every year.

“About 35 billion tonnes of ice calve off the Jakobshavn Glacier each year and extend out to sea,” Buslavičiūtė says.

It travels at a top speed of as much as 40 metres per day.

There has been a drastic transformation, yet the satellite images revealed by the European Space Agency Sentinel-1 mission reveal that the average speed of the glacier reduced in 2024 to 18.6 meters per day, decreasing by almost half from previous decades.

Experts describe that the changes of this type are far from synonymous with stability.

These prove to be indicators of glacier mass change, decreased accumulation of ice due to snowfall, and climatic interaction complexities to be monitored very closely.

Experts have warned that the very same mechanisms have already started in the Himalayas.

The ICIMOD 2023 report said that the Himalayan glacier melting was taking place at a record size, threatening water security for millions of residents in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, and China.

The satellite technology used in Greenland can yield vital inputs to track glacier movement, mass balance estimates, and risk possibility in the region, according to experts.

“Glacier melting directly affects Kashmir’s rivers, agriculture, hydropower, and even drinking water sources for homes. Glacial change also increases the risk of natural glacial-related hazards like floods, landslides, and Glacial Lake Outburst Floods (GLOFs),” says Srinagar-based environment researcher, Nadeem Ahmad.

Scientists use a method referred to as “offset tracking” to map images of a satellite, which were taken on two different dates and quantify pixel-level displacement or the movement of the glaciers over time.

Remote sensing techniques have played a key role in monitoring the Greenland glaciers, and Jakobshavn’s increase is well-documented, even for changes in different parts of the glacier.

The satellite records can also be utilised to monitor Himalayan glaciers, but there would have to be more concentrated observation, predominantly in Kashmir.

The Greenland experience, though, can be helpful everywhere.

At the mouth of Jakobshavn Glacier, a World Heritage site in Ilulissat Icefjord, as well as in Kashmir, the same message is that the glaciers are melting and the climate is changing.

When mass is lost from glaciers, their movement alters, accelerating at times by basal sliding or retarding by reduced snowfall accumulation.

Either is a sign of perturbation of long-term effect, and Kashmir, its glacial mountain streams, and associated vegetation and wildlife, are especially at risk.

Persistent but progressive melting of Himalayan glaciers is threatening agriculture, biodiversity, and water supplies.

The report of Vilnius University is a scientific examination of such change, facts, methods, and equipment, if shared with the Himalayas, might serve to better prepare communities, scientists, and policymakers equally for a better world.

“Speak, glaciers, speak,” is how Buslavičiūtė entitled a recent article on the topic. “The glaciers are speaking. The question is: are we listening?”