Greenland glaciers melting faster than ever: NGO

Yahoo News 2 Sep 09;

COPENHAGEN (AFP) – Greenland's glaciers are melting into the sea faster than ever before, the environmental pressure group Greenpeace claimed on Wednesday.

Glaciers move when melting occurs from the effects of global warming, causing masses of ice to slide into fjords and the sea.

Greenland's Helheim glacier, which measures six kilometres wide (four miles) and is one kilometre thick, moves about 25 metres (yards) a day, Greenpeace said in a statement. The group said that is twice as fast as when its Arctic Sunrise vessel last visited Greenland in 2005.

The speed of the other major glacier in Greenland, Kangerdlugssuaq, is even more dramatic. It moves some 38 metres a day or 14 kilometres a year, Greenpeace said.

"Kangerdlugssuaq Glacier is probably the world's fastest moving glacier," said Dr. Gordon Hamilton, from the University of Maine's Climate Change Institute.

Hamilton is a member of this year's Greenpeace expedition currently inspecting the glaciers in the north and east of the Danish territory.

The group's Arctic Sunrise vessel left for the region at the end of June and is due to complete its mission at the end of September.

The two glaciers produce 10 percent of Greenland's ice output into the North Atlantic.

Glaciers that shed their ice cause sea levels to rise.

Sea levels are currently on the increase by three millimetres a year, according to Greenpeace, and pose a serious threat to people living on islands or in coastal regions.