Climate Change May Shift Mountains with Warming (VIDEO)

First Posted: Nov 06, 2015 07:34 AM EST

Climate change may actually be moving mountains. Scientists have pointed to strong interaction between climate shifts and internal movement in the North American St. Elias Mountain Range.

"To understand how mountain structures evolved through geologic time is no quick task because we are talking millions of years," said Eva Enkelmann, one of the researchers, in a news release. "There are two primary processes that result in the building and eroding of mountains and those processes are interacting."

In this study, the researchers looked at the St. Elias Mountains and how dry it is in the northern part of the range. Precipitation, though, is very high in the southern area, resulting in more erosion. As climate change influences erosion, this can produce a shift in the tectonics.

The researchers synthesized several different data sets to show how a rapid exhumation occurred in the central part of the mountain range over four to two million years ago. This feedback process between erosion and internal tectonic shifting resulting in a mass of material moving up toward the surface very rapidly.

While Earth was warmer millions of years ago, glaciers existed in high latitudes. When Earth shifted 2.6 million years ago to a colder climate and glaciation intensified, existing glaciers caused the area to not move as they froze solid.

Glaciers today, though, are eroding the region rapidly. In other words, they're changing the shape of the mountain with climate change.

"By going to all of these individual glaciers, we can get a much better understanding of what has happened and what was moved on the entire mountain range," said Enkelmann.

The findings are published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.