🤓 Unexpected Discovery in Greenland. Deep Ice Behaves Like Boiling Water

Scientists from the University of Bergen have solved the mystery. Deep inside the Greenland ice sheet, strange processes are occurring—the ice is slowly "stirring," forming huge swirling structures resembling plumes.

It turns out this is thermal convection: temperature differences cause the lower layers of ice to move like boiling water in a pot of pasta.

This is completely atypical for a solid material, but ice is a million times softer than the Earth's mantle, where such processes are common.

Moreover, deep ice in northern Greenland is about ten times softer than previously thought.

This does not mean melting will accelerate directly, but understanding ice physics will become more accurate, thus improving sea level rise forecasts.
✨ "Boiling ice"? It's a metaphor, but a very accurate one.

In a pot of water, bubbles rise due to temperature differences: hot water expands, becomes lighter, and rises upward. The same happens in the Greenland ice sheet, only on a scale of kilometers and at speeds of millimeters per year.

For coastal cities, such details are a matter of life and death)

👉 Ice lives its own complex life. Details at the link