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Spring Melt

After long dark winters, sunlight returns to Greenland each spring. Meltwater streams into depressions in the ice to form large supraglacial lakes that can be miles wide. Thousands of these lakes form atop the Greenland Ice Sheet, and about a decade ago scientists discovered that huge cracks can form suddenly at the bottom of these lakes and drain the entire lake of water within an hour or two. In 2015, scientists led by MIT-WHOI Joint Program graduate student Laura Stevens found the complex mechanism that triggers cracks to form in some lakes.(Photo by Laura Stevens, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)