Study: Greenland rose as ice melted

SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 10 (UPI) -- A 2010 spike in the melting of ice cover in Greenland caused a large part of the island's bedrock to lift almost an inch, a U.S. researcher says.

A network of 50 GPS stations measured the uplift as the ice loss was accelerated in southern Greenland by 100 billion tons, Ohio State University researcher Michael Bevis said.

A rise of 0.79 inches was recorded over just a five-month period, a university release said.

The findings have implications for climate change, Bevis told a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco Friday.

"Pulses of extra melting and uplift imply that we'll experience pulses of extra sea level rise," he said. "The process is not really a steady process."

Bevis said he's sure the 2010 uplift was due to the extreme ice loss detected that year.

"Really, there is no other explanation. The uplift anomaly correlates with maps of the 2010 melting day anomaly," he said. "In locations where there were many extra days of melting in 2010, the uplift anomaly is highest."