Iceland Rising as Climate Change Causes Glaciers to Melt, Researchers Say

The crust under Iceland is rebounding as climate change melts the island’s great ice caps, researchers report in the
GPS stations measure Iceland crust movement
journal Geophysical Research Letters. The current rapid rising, or uplift, of the Icelandic crust is a result of accelerated melting of the island’s glaciers and coincides with a regional warming trend that began roughly 30 years ago, the scientists said. Some areas in south-central Iceland are moving upward as much as 1.4 inches per year — a surprisingly high speed, the researchers say. Whether the rebound is related to past deglaciation or modern glacial thinning and global warming had been an open question until now, said co-author Richard Bennett, a geoscientist at the University of Arizona. “What we’re observing is a climatically induced change in the earth’s surface,” Bennett said.