The Vikings farmed on Greenland. That was when there was a long warm period. Fast forward to my dad being stationed there in 1953-54. You could not grow crops there. There are and always have been weather cycles of warming and cooling. It is all controlled by sun spots and flares.

After flying over southern Greenland in late June 2018, as a pilot, I now see this vast area in a whole new light. Thank you for a fine talk and videos.

Question: What's hidden under the Greenland ice sheet? Answer: Greenland.

Kristin Poinar: We had no idea this glacier aquifer existed. *Nestle enters the chat*

I flew over it two weeks ago, Prague CZ, Frankfurt DE to Portland Oregon USA, stunning, I've never seen a more desolate and remote beautiful place, except Australia and New Mexico.

Ive heard that the Greenland Ice sheet is getting thinner for years now, and yet a group of WW2 aircraft that landed there in the 1940's is now covered with over 300 feet of ice and snow. Maybe it's all getting thinner except the area the planes actually landed, I wouldn't discount any excuse they might use to dismiss an obvious observation. One of the aircraft, a P-38 lightning, was eventually recovered and restored it's called Glacier Girl, you can look it up.

Amazing presentation, thanks a lot :)

Very interesting. Thanks a lot for good explenations and visualizations.

This is exactly the kind of talks I want to see from TED. Interesting subject, well-spoken presenter and lots of visualisations. Well done, one of the best talks in a long time.

Fascinating talk, great scientist - this is why I love TED.

An interesting presentation, it brought to mind cities that in ancient times were port cities and now they are hundreds of miles from any salt waters. We seem to have been here before.

Great talk! Very informative and pedagogic!

When the ice is gone, we can go on vacation there and play golf. New York city under water . This is a win , win situation

FYI: After some calculations, in 10 years about 0,09% of the icesheet in Greenland has melted. Don't be mislead by graphs, the red doesn't mean gone. Greenland icesheet: 2850 tera-tons | Amount melted: 2.5 tera-tons | Amount melted: less than a thousandth Also measurements started in 2002, what about last 10,000 years?

Outstanding presentation. Now I know why I can never find my slippers!

Very cool comfortable spring in Texas this year (2021), it's often 95 by now but we linger in the 80's with cooler evenings and mornings. I figure it's impossible to melt that much ice into ocean without causing temps to drop as well. I'm also figuring on a murderously hot summer when it finally gets here.

Probably my car keys . Ive looked every where else .

"What's hidden under the Greenland ice sheet?" Uhm... Greenland. Rocks and stuff.

My grandfather was with the Mawson Experition to Antarctica 1911 - 14.

"We never thought that it would lose mass this quickly..." ...because you underestimate natural forces.

I spent three summers up on the Greenland Ice Sheet during grad school from '94-'96. A fantastic place to visit. Nothing but white snow for hundreds of miles in any direction.

So what was the ocean level in 1100AD, when the Vikings were still farming on Greenland? Can't scientists easily determine that, to give us an idea of what the sea level would be if most glacial ice was gone from Greenland?

مشكورين الاخت عفاف و الاخ مهند

That’s cool I’m in Australia 🇦🇺 I have a boat but don’t have a trailer looking forward to going fishing again.

Typically the Earth is very productive during warm periods, it's the cooling that scares me.

I'll start to believe some of these more extreme sea level rise estimates when they stop building on the coasts and start moving existing structures further inland.

When the Vikings sailed to a large island which was lush and green they named it greenland and they lived there happily for three hundred years. Then it started to get colder and eventually it was completely frozen over so most of them left and headed back to Scandinavia! So don't panic about it melting now. Maybe we have sped up the process but it was due to happen anyway!

Very interesting talk, Kristin.

im suprised nestle hasnt yet stolen rights to all the fresh water under the ice

Is it just me or does every TED speaker start with an anecdote?

2019 out of time! Catch as MUCH of that water as you can!!!!!!

I learned everything that she says in the video 20 yrs ago on PBS....LOL!

wow ! below the greenland ice we have water - what a discovery

What's hidden under the Greenland ice sheet? IDK....Greenland?

Glaciologists work so important! Thank you!

The Danish meteorological institute has data showing that the mass balance is positive not negative. That is to say that the mass of ice is increasing by approximately 350GT per year. This is the opposite of the data presented here - which is curious. How can two sets of data, apparently referring to the same phenomenon, yield such conflicting results?

Gee..... what a shock!!! There’s water under the ice. Seriously??

would love to visit greenland

Its amazing how much you can see from a plane.

the army new there was water under the ice sheets back in the 50's when they built camp century

I expect they will find remains of old civilizations that mock our small view of history.

What I find interesting is that within the cooler water, the intermolecular attractions line up complex molecules ( such as polar proteins like RNA, DNA) and encourage the proper alignments for chemical reactions much, much better than the random high energy motion of molecules in a heated environment. Perhaps, the periods of glaciation have had greater impacts on the diversification of organic molecules and, perhaps, the evolution of life on this planet than the periods of warming? No idea - but this was my first thought on learning of the effects of glacial water cooling on molecular motion in published research. (Norwegian?) Apparently Greenland ice mass (as well as Antarctic ice mass) has increased in mass since this talk was made, and sea levels have dropped according in both Greenland and New York, as they have cyclically in the past. Don't believe me, check the data. We have had 'emotional reactions' to periods of warming and periods of cooling in the past. Don't believe me, check the literature. Peace.

20 centimetres in 80 years is approximately 8 x the current rate of sea level rise. I didn't catch how or why the acceleration?

Superman’s cave of solitude is also located here. Superheroes can't fight crime and save lives around the clock. Sometimes they need a place to go to get away from it all, a place that is all their own, where they can relax and do the things they want to do.

Always great to hear direct from an informed enthusiast, thanks!

All so would love to visit Greenland an Iceland, Iceland is green, Greenland is ice

Sometimes I venture to think they are melting the ice on purpose!

2017 november 6. elég régi videó. Azóta sem változott a helyzet ahogyan ma elnézem, de nincs éghajlat változás. Hihetetlen!

The name Greenland was given by the norwegian viking Erik "the Red" Thorvaldsen around 985 a.c. as he tried to allure settlers to move to the island from Iceland and Norway. The climate in the southern regions at that time was mild ("green"), hence the name.

My microwave melted an ice cube in 30 seconds....

“Pressurised water fractures rocks, all it needs is a crack to get started.” - That is the double entendre of the century

How many here tried microwaving ice at home after watching this?

When was this talk actually filmed? I know it says published 11/6/17. Greenland has stop losing ice some time ago.

Didn't Al Gore say some place would be covered in water by now from his movie?

WOW, never thought that gravitation also works on water and ice in Greenland and also temperature influences the water like anywhere else on the Earth.

very good presentation!! :D

Greenland is full of ice and snow And Iceland is nothing but grass .. Lol

Take a cup of water and freeze it. Then thaw it out on a table overnight. Will it overflow???

What's under the sheet? Proof of the civilisation that thrived there before it froze over

Ice two miles thick covers all of Greenland. And it's lost so much ice, enough to cover all of Australia 2 feet deep! Well if Australia is 3.5x the size of Greenland, Greenland's ice must have diminished by over 7 feet! Doesn't seem like that is such a big impact on ice that was 10,000 feet thick.

That ice on land but the ice at the north pole has water under it right. So like a glass with water and ice filled to the top when the ice melts the water in the glass stays the same right. Also some ice sheets are getting bigger. In northern Ontario last winter it was 30 days longer this winter April 12 lakes are covered in ice still and 2ft of snow still.

Wow! We’ve got 17 years of data out of the last 10,000,000 years... we know everything. What I particularly love is how the melting ice is exposing farm ground and ancient buildings. Greenland wasn’t named Greenland because it was icy or white with snow... for Pete’s sake! They used to grow grapes there!

She certainly knew her subject to give to us. So much of our globe has ice with green underneath but the mystery is Antarctica.

If it did melt off, that would be great, I love it when spring melt comes back to Maine.

I wonder what Ms Poinar thinks of the hiawatha crater discovery... Also, do flat earthers call it flat warming?

Kristin - - Intelligence + Heat Factor approaching 10 = I'm in love..lol

3:20 You tell them Krisin, you have to get it wet.

informative talk...you are smart, fit, well versed...and you are creative by developing a numeric model we can use to further understand how this works ...very proud of you

You could build nuclear power plants that would take water from the ocean, take the salt out, then, freeze the water for a giant snow making machine.

well about 400 feet down are p-38 lightining fighters that landed there in 1942 so its gotten 400 ft THICKER since 1942

Simple answer to the question "What's hidden under the Greenland Ice Sheet?" GREENLAND!

Greenland; winning hide & seek since 280,000BC

Not the plastic ocean talk,but how about a skimmer ship to suck up the plastic in the ocean and recycle it into usable products?

Great presentation with useful information!

Here in Australia we are experiencing severe drought so we'll take your knee deep flood thanks very much . +We can all swim.

Be careful looking around down there! Already found 1 frozen decepticon, don't need another!

Notice the ice melt video stopped at 2014. That would be because it's been growing since then and would fit in with what she was trying to say

"The aquifer water drives the crevasse all the way to the base of the ice sheet, a thousand meters below". "The Greenland ice sheet is huge, the size of Mexico. And it's ice from top to bottom is two miles thick". So...is the ice sheet thickness a thousand meters, or two miles??? BIG difference! (Unless the snow {aquifer} is over seven thousand feet.)

She keeps saying "we had no idea" this or that existed etc. I've had every idea . So leave me out of that "we".

yo - kristin. VERY interesting and well presented. thanks.

Good video by TED after a long time. Cheers :D :D

Thank God they discovered the Hiawatha Crater a year after this video!

It actually an ice Mountain, 6000 feet tall , DEW line had buildings on top, Raydar Site.

I like the fact she doesn't suggest we can influence the sea-level rise. Because we can't. It's coming, and there's nothing we can do to prevent it, because the planet is still coming out of an ice age.

Sorry, no sea level rise, but rather a mini ice age,

I was just watching a video on the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, when all the polar ice melted, you could swim at the north pole where the water was comfortably warm and Greenland was completely ice free and covered with subtropical plant life, forests and animals. Now people are panicked over the idea of the world going back to something similar - a nice, warm, humid planet with abundant plant life and animal species. Funny - on the video about the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, one chap from Siberia said he was willing to swap modern weather in Siberia for a tropical rainforest anytime. I don't blame him.

Maybe there are caves in the ocean floor that take in the melted ice. We know more about the moon than the ocean floor.

MELT THE ICE!!! I want to see what Greenland is SUPPOSED to look like! Maybe it will look like Iceland, then I could go there on vacation all the time.

Ice cubes won't melt in the microwave. My mind is blown.

If someone finds my car keys under there....I could use them. And my remote control

Those cracks in the ice sheet look terrifying. Imagine being on the ice sheet but you have enough supplies to walk to solid ground and then on the way you fall down into one of those cracks... Edit : Yeah I have never had the drive to be an explorer.

Who's here Aug 2019... Cuz I see more than 2017 when this was post... Hmmm Greenland on news, and many 2-3 year old vids of Greenland in my feed.

The aquifer is not mysterious at all. The volume of the aquifer represents a trivial percentage of the total mass of water, both liquid and solid. The ice on Greenland averages about 3,000 meters thick, about 10,000 feet (3,000 meters). The aquifer is about equal to about 1/300 of one per cent of the total mass of ice, like one drop of water in a bottle of 30,000 drops of water. Greenland has the shape of a basin with the center below sea level because the weight of the ice depresses the center of the island. The aquifer may overflow into the sea. But this may be counter-balanced by the accumulation of ice in the center. The center of Greenland has thicker ice now than 10,000 years ago, which means that ice has been accumulating in the center during the Holocene. Moreover, a study of Kulusuk Island provides data on the history of ice volume changes over time that shows long-term natural fluctuations in the growth and decline of ice masses. The real issues are (1) whether or not the accumulation of ice in some parts of Greenland exceeds the melt near the coasts and (2) how the ice sheet fluctuates as a result of natural climate variation during the last two millennia. Once these issues have been resolved we will have a basis for knowing whether modern changes in ice mass are natural fluctuations or man-made or both. I recommend the web site of Dr James Aber, professor of Earth science at Emporia University. This is an unbiased source for glaciology and Quaternary geology. ES 331 Ice Age Environments, ES 767 Quaternary Geology academic.emporia.edu/aberjame/ice/icehome.htm

Trouble is we don't know anything.

Thanks Kristin.

You are a numeric model, a 10!

I am calling BS on this....my uncle was in the US Corp and they found water in 1954.....

5:45 time travel is possible but not the kind we dream about

This isn't what I was expecting. I was hoping this would talk about something like archeology, fossil records, natural resources, anthropology, ...

In the next 80 years...the sea level was already expected to rise 20 cm...its been doing approximately that for 10s of thousands of years...but wave your hand as if your expecting a few meters..the IPCC prediction was 48cm mean by 2100..