Energy Outlook

By: Jacob Kim

Last September, a puzzling seismic event caught the attention of scientists around the globe. For nine days straight, sensors picked up a consistent rhythmic movement every 90 seconds. This wasn’t typical earthquake behavior, and the regularity of the tremors left experts scratching their heads.

As theories circulated among researchers worldwide, a team in Denmark connected the dots to a landslide in Greenland’s remote Dickson Fjord. Satellite images revealed a massive cloud of dust over the area, indicating that 25 million cubic meters of rock had plunged into the icy waters below. This created a 200-meter wave that ricocheted back and forth in the fjord, causing the seismic vibrations detected far and wide.

University College London’s Stephen Hicks explained that such landslides are becoming more frequent as glaciers melt and lose their ability to support the mountains around them. Julienne Stroeve, also from UCL, pointed out the dangerous consequences of these changes, noting that glacier melting can lead to avalanches, falling ice, and even the bursting of glacier lakes, all of which pose significant risks to human life.

What caused the enormous glacier to melt? Climate change. Glaciers are immensly essential in our global ecosystem not only due to the immense supply of freshwater hidden within these glaciers, but when glaciers fall, sea levels rise. Flooding, erosion, habitat loss, and the impact of storms increase enormously as sea levels rise. Not to mention the impact rising sea levels will have on renewable energy. Tidal energy depends on the reliability of the waves and the tidal range (the range between the heights of low-tide and high-tide); however, when sea levels rise, areas with large tidal ranges will shift, potentially causing existing tidal energy plants to become obsolete as they will be financially inefficient. Rising sea levels will serve humanity and the condition of our earth quite poorly and the only way to stop it is too curb climate change.