"Preliminary findings indicate Kangerdlugssuaq Glacier on Greenland's east coast could be one of the fastest moving glaciers in the world with a speed of almost 14 kilometres (nearly nine miles) per year," scientists aboard a Greenpeace ship in the Arctic said.

In 1988, the glacier was advancing at just five kilometers per year, the scientists on the Arctic Sunrise ship said, citing satellite imagery.

"This is a dramatic discovery," said Gordon Hamilton of the Climate Change Institute at the University of Maine in the United States, who took the measurements on the glacier on Greenland's east coast.

"These new results suggest that the loss of ice from the Greenland Ice Sheet, unless balanced by an equivalent increase in snowfall, could be larger and faster than previously estimated," he added.

The melting of the glacier could have a knock-on effect on glaciers further north in the Arctic, Hamilton warned, which "could have serious implications for the rate of sea level rise."

The Kangerdlugssuaq Glacier takes ice from the Greenland Ice Sheet to the ocean and discharges icebergs which contribute to sea-level rise. Any change in the glacier's speed would be very significant in terms of sea-level rise, Greenpeace said.

Researchers from the Arctic Council last November warned that the Arctic is warming at double the rate as the rest of the planet, and that within the next 100 years the ice cover there will completely disappear in summer and species living in the ice field, such as polar bears, will be threatened.

Seven of the eight countries on the council -- made up of Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden and the United States -- have backed the 1997 Kyoto Treaty on climate change, but have been stymied by Washington, which refused to ratify the pact and then ditched it in 2001.

"Greenland's shrinking glaciers are sending an urgent warning to the world that action is needed now to stop climate change," said Martina Krueger, the leader of the Greenpeace expedition said in a statement.

"How many more urgent warnings does the (US President George W.) Bush administration need before it takes meaningful action on climate change?"

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