As ice sheets melt, they can release pent-up energy and trigger massive earthquakes, according to new study.
Global warming may already be triggering such earthquakes and may cause more in the future as ice continues to melt worldwide, the researchers say.
A series of large earthquakes shook Scandinavia around 10,000 years ago, along faults that are now quiet, the scientists point out.
The timing of each earthquake roughly coincided with the melting of thick ice sheets from the last ice age in those same places.
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| ©Joe Scherschel/NGS
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Alaska's Columbia Glacier has been retreating in recent years.
A new study has found that melting ice sheets can release pent-up energy and trigger massive earthquakes. A separate, earlier study found that small earthquakes were more common in Alaska in the summers, when ice there was melting.
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