As the glacier crumbles into the sea, the ice has been surging forward at the rate of 150 feet per day, according to a study published in the journal The Cryosphere. "We are now seeing summer speeds more than four times what they were in the 1990s, on a glacier which at that time was believed to be one of the fastest, if not the fastest, glacier in Greenland," said Ian Joughin, a glaciologist at the University of Washington's Polar Science Center and the lead author of the paper. "As the glaciers flow faster, they discharge more icebergs to the ocean, and as you pour more ice into the ocean, sea level goes up and the ice sheet goes down," Joughin says. This means that, even though the glacier is flowing towards the coast and carrying more ice into the ocean, its calving front is actually retreating, stated the press release.
– The glacier that spawned the iceberg that sank the Titanic isn't deliberately trying to send thousands more people to watery graves—but it couldn't be doing much better if it was. Researchers say that as the Arctic warms, Greenland's Jakobshavn glacier has become the fastest-moving glacier in the world, hitting speeds of 150 feet per day in summer 2012 and pushing more and more ice into the sea, the Christian Science Monitor reports. The glacier—essentially a river of ice inside the Greenland ice sheet—is moving around four times as fast as it was in the '90s, when it was already one of the world's fastest-moving glaciers. This glacier alone has contributed an extra millimeter to sea levels over the last decade, making the acceleration alarming news. "As the glaciers flow faster, they discharge more icebergs to the ocean, and as you pour more ice into the ocean, sea level goes up and the ice sheet goes down," the lead researcher tells NPR. "So the fact that this glacier is flowing so much faster means it's actually making a much bigger contribution to sea level." Scientists tracking the melting ice have employed an unusual tool—rubber ducks.