Retreating glaciers created 2,500km of “new” coastline and 35 “new” islands in the Arctic between 2000 and 2020, according to a new study. The research uses satellite images of more than 1,700 glaciers in Greenland, Alaska, the Canadian Arctic, Russian Arctic, Iceland and Svalbard. The findings show that 85% of these glaciers retreated over 2000-20, revealing 123km of new coastline per year on average. The study, published in Nature Climate Change , links the acceleration in glacier melt to warmer ocean and air temperatures. The authors find that just 101 glaciers – less than 6% of the total – were responsible for more than half of the total additional coastline length. For example, the retreat of the Zachariae Isstrom glacier in north-east Greenland revealed 81km of new coastline alone. The study warns that the freshly revealed coastlines are more prone to landslides, which may, in turn, create “dangerous tsunamis” that pose risks to human life and infrastructure. A scientist not involved in the study tells Carbon Brief that it remains “unclear” what the implications of the new coastlines will be for the people and ecosystems of the Arctic. He suggests that they “may become home to important ecosystems that play a hitherto unquantified role in the global carbon cycle”. Glacier melt Glaciers are slow-moving rivers of ice found on almost every continent in the world. They typically advance downhill by a few centimetres every day, driven by their own weight. The head of a glacier is always found on land – typically at high altitude , where temperatures are low. Here, precipitation and avalanches cause snow to build up on the surface of the glacier. Over time, the snow compacts into ice, adding mass to the glacier. Meanwhile, the tail end of the glacier is typically found at lower […]