The Greenland Ice Sheet is losing mass at an accelerating rate due to increased surface melt and flow acceleration in outlet glaciers. Quantifying future dynamic contributions to sea level requires ...accurate portrayal of outlet glaciers in ice sheet simulations, but to date poor knowledge of subglacial topography and limited model resolution have prevented reproduction of complex spatial patterns of outlet flow. Here we combine a high-resolution ice-sheet model coupled to uniformly applied models of subglacial hydrology and basal sliding, and a new subglacial topography data set to simulate the flow of the Greenland Ice Sheet. Flow patterns of many outlet glaciers are well captured, illustrating fundamental commonalities in outlet glacier flow and highlighting the importance of efforts to map subglacial topography. Success in reproducing present day flow patterns shows the potential for prognostic modelling of ice sheets without the need for spatially varying parameters with uncertain time evolution.
Passive microwave satellite observations are used to identify the presence of surface meltwater across Antarctica at daily intervals from July 1979 to June 2020, with a focus on ice shelves. ...Antarctic Peninsula ice shelves have the highest number of annual days of melt, with a maximum of 89 days. Over the entire time period, there are few significant linear trends in days of melt per year. High melt years can be split into two distinct categories, those with high melt days in Dronning Maud Land and Wilkes Land, and those with high melt days in the Antarctic Peninsula and the Bellingshausen Sea sector of West Antarctica. The first pattern coincides with significant negative correlations between melt days and spring and summer Southern Annular Mode. Both patterns also form the primary modes of spatial and annual variability in the dataset observed by Principal Component Analysis. Areas experiencing extended melt for the first time in years tend to show large decreases in subsequent winter microwave emissions due to structural changes in the firn. We use this to identify the impact of novel melt events, particularly over the austral summers of 1991/92 and 2015/16 on the Ross Ice Shelf.
Basal motion is the primary mechanism for ice flux in Greenland, yet a widely applicable model for predicting it remains elusive. This is due to the difficulty in both observing small-scale bed ...properties and predicting a time-varying water pressure on which basal motion putatively depends. We take a Bayesian approach to these problems by coupling models of ice dynamics and subglacial hydrology and conditioning on observations of surface velocity in southwestern Greenland to infer the posterior probability distributions for eight spatially and temporally constant parameters governing the behavior of both the sliding law and hydrologic model. Because the model is computationally expensive, characterization of these distributions using classical Markov Chain Monte Carlo sampling is intractable. We skirt this issue by training a neural network as a surrogate that approximates the model at a sliver of the computational cost. We find that surface velocity observations establish strong constraints on model parameters relative to a prior distribution and also elucidate correlations, while the model explains 60% of observed variance. However, we also find that several distinct configurations of the hydrologic system and stress regime are consistent with observations, underscoring the need for continued data collection and model development.
The Greenland Ice Sheet holds 7.2 m of sea level equivalent and in recent decades, rising temperatures have led to accelerated mass loss. Current ice margin recession is led by the retreat of outlet ...glaciers, large rivers of ice ending in narrow fjords that drain the interior. We pair an outlet glacier-resolving ice sheet model with a comprehensive uncertainty quantification to estimate Greenland's contribution to sea level over the next millennium. We find that Greenland could contribute 5 to 33 cm to sea level by 2100, with discharge from outlet glaciers contributing 8 to 45% of total mass loss. Our analysis shows that uncertainties in projecting mass loss are dominated by uncertainties in climate scenarios and surface processes, whereas uncertainties in calving and frontal melt play a minor role. We project that Greenland will very likely become ice free within a millennium without substantial reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.
Arctic ice shelves have declined over the past several decades, one of many indications of a rapidly changing cryosphere. Here we use a collection of off-nadir Landsat 8 images, a 1978 digital ...orthophotograph and photogrammetrically derived DEM, satellite altimetry and other data to examine the causes of an Arctic ice-shelf retreat in northernmost Greenland, the Hunt Fjord Ice Shelf (HFIS). HFIS has several distinct provenance regions comprised of glacier-derived ice and corrugated multi-decadal fast ice, with varying ice thicknesses (5–64 m). Available imagery shows little change in HFIS between 1978 and 2012, after which several midsummer calving events occurred (2012, 2016 and 2019) that reduced the HFIS by 42.5 km2 (~56%). Shelf area losses began as the number of surface melt days on the adjacent ice sheet more than doubled relative to the 1980s. Recent calving events also occurred during open-water periods at the ice-shelf front. Prior to mid-2012, there were no calving events during similar open-water periods. HFIS tributary glaciers have thinned by 3–20 m near their grounding zones, and may have accelerated since the 1980s, likely due to increased basal melting from contact with warm Atlantic Water.
It is important to understand recent changes in the velocity of Greenland glaciers because the mass balance of the Greenland Ice Sheet is partly determined by the flow rates of these outlets. ...Jakobshavn Isbræ is Greenland's largest outlet glacier, draining about 6.5 per cent of the ice-sheet area, and it has been surveyed repeatedly since 1991 (ref. 2). Here we use remote sensing data to measure the velocity of Jakobshavn Isbræ between 1992 and 2003. We detect large variability of the velocity over time, including a slowing down from 6,700 m yr-1 in 1985 to 5,700 m yr-1 in 1992, and a subsequent speeding up to 9,400 m yr-1 by 2000 and 12,600 m yr-1 in 2003. These changes are consistent with earlier evidence for thickening of the glacier in the early 1990s and rapid thinning thereafter. Our observations indicate that fast-flowing glaciers can significantly alter ice discharge at sub-decadal timescales, with at least a potential to respond rapidly to a changing climate.
Present understanding of Greenland's subglacial geology is derived mostly from interpolation of geologic mapping of its ice‐free margins and unconstrained by geophysical data. Here we refine the ...extent of its geologic provinces by synthesizing geophysical constraints on subglacial geology from seismic, gravity, magnetic and topographic data. North of 72°N, no province clearly extends across the whole island, leaving three distinct subglacial regions yet to be reconciled with margin geology. Geophysically coherent anomalies and apparent province boundaries are adjacent to the onset of faster ice flow at both Petermann Glacier and the Northeast Greenland Ice Stream. Separately, based on their subaerial expression, dozens of unusually long, straight and sub‐parallel subglacial valleys cross Greenland's interior and are not yet resolved by current syntheses of its subglacial topography.
Plain Language Summary
The Greenland Ice Sheet obscures the rocks beneath 79% of Greenland. By necessity, scientists have relied mostly on studying the rocks exposed along Greenland's edge to understand the island's interior geology. We examine geophysical data from seismometers on the ground, satellites that measure Earth's gravity and magnetic fields and surface topography, and aircraft that measure those same properties and ice thickness. We draw a new map of Greenland's geology beneath the ice sheet by examining where those data show similar signals regarding the nature of the underlying rock, and where they could be related to mapped rock exposures. We also find evidence of some areas with geophysical expressions that are distinct from the rocks found at the island's edges. Some geologic structures, which are entirely covered by ice, may affect how ice flows from Greenland's vast interior toward its coast. Finally, we identify many valleys beneath the ice that are very long and often aligned with each other, but which are not yet fully captured in present maps of the topography beneath the ice.
Key Points
We produced a new synthesis of subglacial boundaries for Greenland's geologic provinces from seismic, gravity, magnetic and topography data
Three subglacial regions in central and northern Greenland cannot yet be reconciled with surface‐exposed geologic provinces
We find evidence for a large subglacial valley network that is not fully resolved by subglacial topography syntheses for Greenland
Seasonal changes in glacier basal motion are attributable to variations in subglacial hydrology and cause variations in both ice discharge and glacier erosion. We develop a novel workflow based upon ...Landsat 8 feature tracking to document differences between spatial patterns of summer and winter glacier surface speed, which reflect changes in the distribution of basal motion. We identify and characterize summer speedups on 13 of 19 land‐terminating glaciers in Alaska's Wrangell‐St Elias Ranges. The speedups are relatively uniform over much of the ablation zones, and the speedup magnitudes vary by only a factor of ~2 between glaciers whose velocities span an order of magnitude. Summer speedups extend up to ~30 km up glacier from termini and often end at the bases of icefalls. These data provide systematic observation of the spatial pattern of enhanced summer glacier basal motion and suggest the possibility of its parameterization in glacier models.
Key Points
We characterize the spatial pattern of seasonal speedup on land‐terminating Alaska valley glaciers using a fully automated remote sensing approach
About 20% of study glacier longitudinal profiles show clear summer speedups, which are relatively uniform (0.3 cm d−1 km−1) and 11 cm d−1 on average
These data inform our expectations about the distribution of glacier basal motion and glacier erosion, and may provide observational constraint for glacier models
Water plays a crucial role in ice-sheet stability and the onset of ice streams. Subglacial lake water moves between lakes and rapidly drains, causing catastrophic floods. The exact mechanisms by ...which subglacial lakes influence ice-sheet dynamics are unknown, however, and large subglacial lakes have not been closely associated with rapidly flowing ice streams. Here we use satellite imagery and ice-surface elevations to identify a region of subglacial lakes, similar in total area to Lake Vostok, at the onset region of the Recovery Glacier ice stream in East Antarctica and predicted by ice-sheet models. We define four lakes through extensive, flat, featureless regions of ice surface bounded by upstream troughs and downstream ridges. Using ice velocities determined using interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR), we find the onset of rapid flow (moving at 20 to 30 m yr-1) of the tributaries to the Recovery Glacier ice stream in a 280-km-wide segment at the downslope margins of these four subglacial lakes. We conclude that the subglacial lakes initiate and maintain rapid ice flow through either active modification of the basal thermal regime of the ice sheet by lake accretion or through scouring bedrock channels in periodic drainage events. We suggest that the role of subglacial lakes needs to be considered in ice-sheet mass balance assessments.
We show that subglacial freshwater discharge is the principal process driving high rates of submarine melting at tidewater glaciers. This buoyant discharge draws in warm seawater, entraining it in a ...turbulent upwelling flow along the submarine face that melts glacier ice. To capture the effects of subglacial discharge on submarine melting, we conducted 4 days of hydrographic transects during late summer 2012 at LeConte Glacier, Alaska. A major rainstorm allowed us to document the influence of large changes in subglacial discharge. We found strong submarine melt fluxes that increased from 9.1 ± 1.0 to 16.8 ± 1.3 m d−1 (ice face equivalent frontal ablation) as a result of the rainstorm. With projected continued global warming and increased glacial runoff, our results highlight the direct impact that increases in subglacial discharge will have on tidewater outlet systems. These effects must be considered when modeling glacier response to future warming and increased runoff.
Key Points
Subglacial discharge varied from 130 to 440 m3/s over a 4 day period
Submarine melting at the face correspondingly increased from 9 to 17 m d‐1
Global warming will increase subglacial discharge impacting tidewater systems
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