One of the more amazing facts about the ongoing destruction of
the Greenland ice sheet is that it is producing earthquakes that
can be detected worldwide. Now, fresh evidence is at hand to
show that these “ice quakes” are spreading to previously
quiescent parts of Greenland. We’re only in September, but it
seems increasingly likely that 2012 will set a record for such
quakes. Some readers may remember my article from 2010 about the
acceleration of Greenland’s outlet glaciers, which carry ice
from the middle of the great ice sheet and dump it into the sea.
Their speedup, in fits and starts over the past decade, has
coincided with a lot of other evidence that the ice sheet is
deteriorating at an accelerating clip. And it is the calving of
huge icebergs from these sped-up glaciers that is producing the
earthquakes. They are many times weaker than, say, the
earthquake off the coast of Japan last year, but they are strong
enough to be detected by the worldwide network of seismometers.
One of the scientists I quote