Iceland Epilogue 3

As you may know, I went to Iceland at the start of the month (I haven't mentioned it much since...)

Thanks to Andy Palmer, textbook author and examiner, and someone that I bumped into 3 times in Iceland, and then on a Digitalworlds GIS course the week after, for this link....
Extreme Ice Survey is a useful resource for those studying GLACIATION.

I walked on the Solheimajokull glacier a couple of weeks ago.
Here's a pic of me to prove it. Note the 7 layers of clothing I'm wearing (plus my ancient mountain Gore Tex brought out of retirement), and the outwash plain that you can see in the background. The haze is a dust storm of volcanic ash, and the black ash can still be seen clicking to the ice on the left of the picture.
The suggestion is that the ash made the ice darker, therefore absorbing more heat, and that this may have speeded up the localised melting of this ice, particularly where it was already thinned. The snout was certainly rather thin...

The Extreme Ice Survey website also includes a very handy TIMELAPSE.

This was produced using the webcam here, pointing down on the very glacier that I stood on.
Watch the timelapse by clicking the link above...

It shows the glacier over a period from April 2007 to October 2010, and the ice can be seen melting away and retreating.

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