Abstract
THERE are conflicting opinions1–8 on the occurrence of surges in the major ice sheets, deduced in many cases by indirect means. Where an ice sheet surges directly into the ocean, sea-level rise may be catastrophic. Surges in ice sheets may help to explain the apparent difficulties of accounting for the magnitudes of the decay rates deduced for the Laurentide Ice Sheet in terms of energy requirements for melting ice9. That is, large areas of that ice sheet became much thinner than was supposed, a suggestion made on the basis of marine core evidence1. Pure computer simulations10 have shown that cyclic surging of the major ice sheets seems to be possible. This report shows that several surges have occurred within the last millennium on the Barnes Ice Cap, a small subpolar ice sheet on Baffin Island, Canada (Fig. 1).
Published Version
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