Peering Inside Greenland’s Ice Sheet, in 3D

February 5, 2015

Want to know what the inside of an ice sheet looks like?

A new 3D map and animation of the Greenland ice sheet lets researchers peer into the layers of ice laid down over millennia and see how they have been warped as they flow over time and are put under pressure as newer layers accumulate above. This will help them better understand how Greenland—which holds enough ice to raise global sea levels by 20 feet—will respond to current climate change by showing how it responded to similar changes in the past.

The map will “give people that gut-level feel of what an ice sheet looks like on the inside,” said Joe MacGregor, a glaciologist at the University of Texas and one of the leaders of the mapping effort.

Scientific American, Feb. 3, 2015

Alcalde, Feb. 3, 2015

Lice Science, Jan. 30, 2015

Nature World News, Jan. 26, 2015

Featuring Joe MacGregor, Research Associate, Institute for Geophysics, Jackson School of Geosciences.