Climate change is causing the earth’s crust to move in strange and new ways

The two Greenland and Antarctic Ice caps, the world’s two largest ice masses, are melting at an alarming rate, causing major problems for local ecosystems and coastal communities. Now, with even more evidence that the climate crisis is changing everything in bizarre and profound ways, new research suggests that fusion is distorting the earth’s crust.

The new study, published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters last month, analyzes satellite data from ice melt from 2003 to 2018. The authors combined this data with a model showing how ice mass changes affect the crust. The model showed that much of the northern hemisphere moved horizontally due to the melting ice in Greenland and the Arctic.

This happens because the outermost layer of the planet has a little more slack than you might think. As ice caps build up, their weight causes the crust behind them to sink to compensate. When the ice melts, as it does at a record rate due to rising temperatures, the crust has less weight to support and it bounces back.

“Think of a plank of wood floating over a tub filled with water,” said Sophie Coulson, a Harvard planetologist and lead author of the study, in a report. Press release. “When you push the board down, the water below moves down. If you pick it up, you will see the water moving vertically to fill that space. But like an old mattress or sofa cushion that keeps your body depressed after you lay on it, the scab doesn’t always fully revert to its old shape.

During the Ice Age, the earth’s crust was weighed down by ice caps several thousand meters thick. The Earth has rebounded in places where the ice caps have since retreated. But the new phenomenon is a whole different ball game that is driven by the rapid melting climate it causes.

Some previous studies looked at the up-and-down motion that melting ice caps can cause, but the new report took a closer look at horizontal shifts. In some places, researchers have found that the horizontal offsets are larger than the up and down ones. These changes are observable even in areas hundreds of kilometers from the ice loss itself. Researchers unmasked them using a variety of satellite data, including the network that helps provide GPS.

The movement is subtle, averaging much less than one millimeter (0.04 inch) per year worldwide. The crust under western Canada and the United States has moved horizontally up to 0.3 millimeters (0.01 inches) per year. Elsewhere, the most significant changes occurred off the northern edge of Greenland, particularly during periods of significant ice loss. West Antarctica and the Antarctic Peninsula, two hot spots for ice loss, also saw major (OK, “major”) movement, with the crust as far as the Southern Ocean crawling towards areas where the ice was disappearing.

These little changes add up and could actually lead to even more ice cream melt. Coulson said that “the rebound of the crust alters the slope of the bedrock below the ice cap, which can affect the dynamics of the ice. In West Antarctica, for example, the bedrock slopes more inland. The rising spring in the crust of the Southern Ocean could cause the slope to increase even more, sending more seawater to undermine the ice. (To be clear, this is a nominal process and we have much greater and more direct climate change impacts on the ice cap for concern.)

The authors of the new study hope their research will help future studies and other researchers develop a new way to monitor changes in ice mass. Analysis of this crustal movement is crucial for predicting tectonic movements, earthquakes, and other geological processes.

“Understanding all of the factors that cause the crust to move is really important for a wide range of earth science issues,” Coulson said.

This is not the first time that researchers have discovered that melting ice is causing major global changes. Previous studies have shown that the disappearance of the ice redistributed enough water to move the axis of the earth through move its poles of rotation. New the study is the last reminder that the climate crisis is the driving force major, far-reaching changes to the very structure of the Earth—and unless the world phases on the use of fossil fuels, these profound changes will continue.