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Air temperature — not just ocean warming — affects submarine melting of Greenland glaciers

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Melting of the edges of the Greenland ice sheet by the ocean since 1979 is — counterintuitively — controlled almost as much by air temperature as by ocean temperature.

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Fig. 1: Submarine melting and glacier retreat driven by atmospheric and oceanic variability.

References

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This is a summary of: Slater, D. & Straneo, F. Submarine melting of glaciers in Greenland amplified by atmospheric warming. Nat. Geosci. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-022-01035-9 (2022).

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Air temperature — not just ocean warming — affects submarine melting of Greenland glaciers. Nat. Geosci. 15, 763–764 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-022-01036-8

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