glaciology

Alaska’s glaciers are proving to be highly sensitive to warming temperatures. Using radar satellites to monitor more than 3,000 glaciers, researchers found that every 1°C (1.8°F) increase in average summer temperature extends glacier melting by about three weeks. The study also revealed that intense heat waves can strip away up to 28% more protective snow cover, exposing ice much earlier than nor…

The objective is to demonstrate that spatially variable ice-surface roughness is an important, and so far overlooked, component of melt processes in the Greenland Ice Sheet (GrIS), linking the analysis of spatial ice-surface roughness (SISR) derived from satellite laser altimeter data with essential components of surface energy balance modeling, particularly of sensible heat flux. Specific result…

Bear Glacier ice dammed lake filled on Oct. 10th and drained on Oct. 17th, 2025. The Sentinel images also illustrated rifts. Bear Glacier, Alaska on the Kenai Peninsual due to retreat developed an ice dammed proglacial that periodically drains. An...

Stones rain down from the melting icebergs, forming new hard-substrate habitats for marine life on the soft seafloor.

Scientific Data, Published online: 09 June 2026; doi:10.1038/s41597-026-07615-3 A machine-learning-based reconstruction of surface mass balance over the Greenland Ice Sheet from 1950 to 2020

At the world's southernmost reaches, the land is buried under a layer of ice that...

Nature Geoscience, Published online: 05 June 2026; doi:10.1038/s41561-026-02010-4 Ice sheets are steady in cold climates, become unstable as warming weakens ice shelves, then restabilize at higher temperatures. Model simulations suggest sudden shifts between states are driven by ice-shelf variability, not ice volume.

UW research scientist Mira Berdahl, along with ESS Professors Eric Steig and Gerard Roe, helped develop a modeling approach showing that the glacier retreat that enabled the Alaska landslide was driven entirely by human-caused climate change rather than natural processes. Berdahl is interviewed.

When the opportunity arose to work with 5 million-year-old ice from Antarctica, Hailey Smith jumped at the chance.  Smith, a fourth-year undergraduate student, had spent the past year working with graduate student mentor Liam Kirkpatrick on a research project to decipher the origins of layering in ice core segments from Antarctica. These ice cores give us insights into atmospheric conditions mill…

Under the cold temperatures and immense pressures of a glacier, ice does not always behave in ways we’d expect. For example, cutting through ice using the pressure of a weighted wire does not break an ice block in two; as the wire passes through the ice, the melted water refreezes in its wake, leaving an […]

Something massive in Antarctica’s ice is hiding a mysterious structure, and scientists are only now starting to reveal it.

Nature Geoscience, Published online: 03 June 2026; doi:10.1038/s41561-026-01991-6 The region beneath the East Antarctic Ice Sheet experienced rotational extension tectonics before the breakup of Gondwana, which shaped the lithosphere and later development of overlying ice, according to sub-ice topography and geophysical data.

A giant lake the size of Lake Ontario has been hidden under Antarctica’s ice for millions of years, and what scientists found above its waters hints at a world unlike any other on Earth.

An intriguing radial system of buried triangular basins beneath the East Antarctic Ice Sheet may record continent-scale rotational extension, revealing a hidden tectonic architecture that shaped the subglacial landscape and influenced both later Antarctica-Australia breakup and ice-sheet evolution.

Changes at the surface of a volcanic edifice, such as snow or hydrological loading, ice cap melting, and flank destabilization, can cause significant surface deformation. Understanding the contribution of surface processes to ground deformation is therefore important for monitoring the state of the underlying volcanic system. The Katla Volcano in Iceland lies under Mýrdalsjökull, the fourth large…

Nature Geoscience, Published online: 02 June 2026; doi:10.1038/s41561-026-02003-3 Analysis of particles within a coastal Antarctic ice core reveal a shift in atmospheric dynamics and ice-free terrain related to ice loss during the Last Interglacial. Climate simulations with a reduced Antarctic ice extent agree with the ice core record, suggesting that the Ross Ice Shelf and West Antarctic Ice She…

Antarctica plays a crucial role in Earth’s radiative energy balance, with the surface albedo of its snow cover being a key parameter. Snow albedo depends strongly on the optical properties of snow grains in the near-surface layers. Other factors including illumination geometry, cloud conditions and impurities influence albedo, though Antarctic snow is generally pristine. Surface roughness (SR), o…

Speaker/Affiliation: Danny May, Stanford University Title: Local and Regional Controls on the Stability and Evolution of Thwaites Glacier’s Eastern Shear Margin When: Wednesday, June 3 12:00pm PST  Location: EMS B214  Abstract: Projecting future ice mass loss from Antarctica remains one of the largest uncertainties in sea level rise predictions. Thwaites Glacier is among the most rapidl…

Glacier surges are dynamic instabilities that dramatically alter glacier flow and geometry. Their triggers remain poorly understood, and improved methods of monitoring to further constrain the phenomenon are therefore important. We present a novel method for detecting glacier surges automatically using surface elevation data from NASA’s ICESat-2 laser altimetry satellite. Elevation changes from 2…