Greenland has been shaken by giant earthquakes for a while now and scientists conducted a study to find out why.

According to research, these mysterious glacial quakes have increased seven-fold in Greenland over the past two decades. As large chunks of ice break off and drop into the icy water with a great splash, it results in thunderous shaking.

In 2013, scientists conducted research on Helheim Glacier in Greenland for 55 days, employing GPS sensors, cameras and the global seismographic network to record the glacial upheavals taking place. They were able to record ten large-scale glacier retreat events, noting that the glacier retreated by about 1.6 kilometres following the shaking events.

Research has shown that entire meltwater lakes vanish in a matter of hours atop the vast Greenland ice sheet as huge crevasses open beneath them; these events are known a calving. Such an event was recorded at Greenland’s Helheim Glacier, during which it was noted that the reversal of the glacier’s horizontal flow, capsize of the iceberg and resulting acceleration away from the glacier front causes these glacial earthquakes.

Scientists noted during an earlier study that lakes called “supraglacial lakes” form on top of the ice sheet in the summer; in July 2006, a great lake of around 3 square kilometres in area vanished within two hours – researchers calculated that the rate of drainage “exceeded the average flow rate over Niagara Falls.”

Scientists noted that the only place that this water could have gone was down the ice sheet, and they feared that this water could lubricate the base of the ice-sheet, hastening its slide into the ocean.

“The difficult thing about Greenland is, it’s so important for sea level rise because [compared to other countries with massive ice sheets] it’s quite far south,” said study co-author Timothy James, a professor of geography at Swansea University in the United Kingdom.

Scientists have built the first-ever comprehensive map of the layers deep inside Greenland’s ice sheet using radar data from NASA’s Operation IceBridge.

Purchase water coolers and get water cooler rental from Living-Water.