clipped from: www.livescience.com An ancient glacier in the Canadian Arctic rapidly retreated in just a few hundred years, according to new findings by paleoclimatologists at the University at Buffalo. The results are detailed today in the journal Nature Geoscience.
"A lot of glaciers in Antarctica and Greenland are characteristic of the one we studied in the Canadian Arctic," said Jason Briner, assistant professor of geology in the UB College of Arts and Sciences and lead author on the paper. "Based on our findings, they, too, could retreat in a geologic instant."
Acting like glacial conveyor belts, tidewater glaciers are the primary mechanism for draining ice sheet interiors by delivering icebergs to the ocean.
The samples provided the researchers with climate data over a period from 20,000 years ago to about 5,000 years ago, a period when significant warming occurred.