Contrasts in the response of adjacent fjords and glaciers to ice-sheet surface melt in West Greenland
Issue Date
2016-09Author
Bartholomaus, Timothy C.
Stearns, Leigh A.
Sutherland, David A.
Shroyer, Emily L.
Nash, Jonathan D.
Walker, Ryan T.
Catania, Ginny A.
Felikson, Denis
Carroll, Dustin
Fried, Mason J.
Neol, Brice P. Y.
van den Broeke, Michiel R.
Publisher
Cambridge Core
Type
Article
Article Version
Scholarly/refereed, publisher version
Rights
COPYRIGHT: © The Author(s) 2016
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence, which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
Neighboring tidewater glaciers often exhibit asynchronous dynamic behavior, despite relatively uniform regional atmospheric and oceanic forcings. This variability may be controlled by a combination of local factors, including glacier and fjord geometry, fjord heat content and circulation, and glacier surface melt. In order to characterize and understand contrasts in adjacent tidewater glacier and fjord dynamics, we made coincident ice-ocean-atmosphere observations at high temporal resolution (minutes to weeks) within a 10 000 km2 area near Uummannaq, Greenland. Water column velocity, temperature and salinity measurements reveal systematic differences in neighboring fjords that imply contrasting circulation patterns. The observed ocean velocity and hydrography, combined with numerical modeling, suggest that subglacial discharge plays a major role in setting fjord conditions. In addition, satellite remote sensing of seasonal ice flow speed and terminus position reveal both speedup and slow-down in response to melt, as well as differences in calving style among the neighboring glaciers. Glacier force budgets and modeling also point toward subglacial discharge as a key factor in glacier behavior. For the studied region, individual glacier and fjord geometry modulate subglacial discharge, which leads to contrasts in both fjord and glacier dynamics.
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- Geology Scholarly Works [245]
Citation
Bartholomaus, T. C., Stearns, L. A., Sutherland, D. A., Shroyer, E. L., Nash, J. D., Walker, R. T., . . . Broeke, M. R. (2016). Contrasts in the response of adjacent fjords and glaciers to ice-sheet surface melt in West Greenland. Annals of Glaciology, 57(73), 25-38. doi:10.1017/aog.2016.19
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Except where otherwise noted, this item's license is described as: COPYRIGHT: © The Author(s) 2016
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence, which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.