During field work in 1989 it was noted that the front of Storstrømmen glacier, North-East Greenland, had advanced by more than 10 km as compared to its position in 1978. lnspection of satellite ...images shows that the advance took place in the period from 1978 to 1984. Scattered observations of frontal positions back to 1913 indicate a general retreat until 1978. During the advance after 1978, the ice discharge in the frontal region of Storstrømmen was as much as 10.8 km3 per year, which is about half the discharge from Jakobshavn Isbræ, West Greenland, the most productive calving glacier in Greenland. Observed surface-elevation and surface-velocity changes during a period overlapping that of the large frontal advance show all the characteristics associated with a surge.
Hot water drilling and mass-balance measurements were made on the Inland Ice at Pakitsoq north-east of Jakobshavn. Two arrays of moderate and shallow-depth thermistor strings have been installed in ...the ice to map the englacial temperature from the ice margin to the equilibrium line. Water fluctuations were observed in a drill hole connecting to the ice bed. The measurements indicate a high subglacial water pressure dose to the ice overburden pressure.
The easily accessible ice at Paakitsoq offers a favourable opportunity to study the major climatic events that occurred during the last glacial cycle, since large samples of ice with a limited ...age-range can be obtained. In this sense the ice margin record is an alternative to the deep ice-core records where the number of environmental parameters that can be studied is limited by the amount of ice available, each parameter requiring a certain amount of ice for its analysis (Reeh et al., 1993). This possibility has attracted the attention of scientists working with environmental parameters requiring large ice samples. A Danish, American, Canadian and German joint project was therefore initiated, and in April 1994 a programme of retrieving ice samples for studies of pollen, dust, chemistry, textures, fabric and visual stratigraphy was carried out. Furthermore, measurements of mass balance, ice velocity and deformation were made. In addition to the possibility of studying the variation of environmental parameters over a full glacial cycle, the project will also support the establishment of a better chronology along the Paakitsoq profile.
PDF
