A key glacier in Greenland that had been one of the fastest-shrinking ice and snow masses in the world has reversed course and is growing again, according to a NASA report.
Researchers noted that the Jakobshavn glacier started shrinking nearly 2 miles and thinning about 130 feet every year in 2012. However, it started growing again at the same rates in the last two years.
However, some scientists don’t think the trend will continue.
“That was kind of a surprise. We kind of got used to a runaway system,” said Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland ice and climate scientist Jason Box. “The good news is that it’s a reminder that it’s not necessarily going that fast. But it is going.”
Box did not participate in the study of Greenland’s “king” glacier which “discharges the most ice in the northern hemisphere.”
The study’s lead author Ala Khazendar, a NASA glaciologist on the Oceans Melting Greenland initiative, pinned the growth on “a natural and temporary cooling and warming of parts of the ocean” that is similar to El Nino called the North Atlantic Oscillation.
Ultimately, it means that climate change will have a bigger effect on oceans than previously expected.
“In the long run we’ll probably have to raise our predictions of sea level rise again,” NASA climate scientist Josh Willis said.
University of Washington ice scientist Ian Joughin said it would be a “grave mistake” to assume this report proved climate change was a hoax.
The regrowth is “to a large extent, a temporary blip," Joughin told NBC News. "Downturns do occur in the stock market, but overall the long term trajectory is up. This is really the same thing.”