The puzzling fact that Jakobshavn Isbræ, West Greenland, is flowing very fast but without any significant seasonal velocity changes, despite big amounts of surface-derived meltwater entering the ice stream (Echelmeyer and Harrison, 1990), has been explained by a combination of different types of measurements. It is now well established from seismic measurements and radio-echo sounding that Jakobshavn Isbræ flows through a deeply eroded subglacial trench that, even 50 km inland of the grounding line, extends as far as 1500 m below sea level (Clarke and Echelmeyer, 1996; Legarsky and Huang, 2006). Temperature measurements in boreholes down to 65% of the 2500 m thick ice stream at site B, some 50 km upstream of the calving front (Fig. 1b; Iken and others, 1993), were used to infer the presence of a substantial layer of temperate ice, the thickness of which was estimated to be at least 300 m by modeling and matching internal layering structures (Funk and others, 1994; Lüthi and others, 2002). The presence of a thick layer of temperate ice under very high driving stress allows for high ice-deformation rates, which contribute substantially to the observed fast flow velocities. Basal motion, while certainly important, seems to be barely influenced by the seasonal meltwater input (Echelmeyer and Harrison, 1990).