Dr. Søren Rysgaard presents on "Decreasing ice - increasing ice hazards?" at the 4th Annual Meeting of the Canada Excellence Research Chairs, recently held at Université Laval in Quebec. 

The presentation covered recent warming and reductions in sea ice conditions, one result being increasing velocities of thin ice. A mixture of thin ice, multi-year sea ice and glacier ice represents a challenge for industry to manage ice hazards. A theme of the talk was the need to understand the control of iceberg production from the ice shelves and in particular from the Greenland ice sheet.  Deep fjords are hidden below the ice cap and fjords that are not producing large icebergs today, may do so in the future. Many of the icebergs released from the Greenland ice sheet will end in Canada representing a potential risk for collision. The need to understand the complex interaction between melting of the ice cap, sinking of warm melt water into the ice cap, building up of liquid reservoirs within the ice cap, emptying of ice damned lakes, subglacial discharge and heat exchange between tidal glaciers and ocean was reinforced in this talk.