| 1. |
- Doyle, Samuel H., et al.
(författare)
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Amplified melt and flow of the Greenland ice sheet driven by late-summer cyclonic rainfall
- 2015
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Ingår i: Nature Geoscience. - 1752-0894 .- 1752-0908. ; 8:8, s. 647-
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Intense rainfall events significantly affect Alpine and Alaskan glaciers through enhanced melting, ice-flow acceleration and subglacial sediment erosion, yet their impact on the Greenland ice sheet has not been assessed. Here we present measurements of ice velocity, subglacial water pressure and meteorological variables from the western margin of the Greenland ice sheet during a week of warm, wet cyclonic weather in late August and early September 2011. We find that extreme surface runoff from melt and rainfall led to a widespread acceleration in ice flow that extended 140 km into the ice-sheet interior. We suggest that the late-season timing was critical in promoting rapid runoff across an extensive bare ice surface that overwhelmed a subglacial hydrological system in transition to a less-efficient winter mode. Reanalysis data reveal that similar cyclonic weather conditions prevailed across southern and western Greenland during this time, and we observe a corresponding ice-flow response at all land- and marine-terminating glaciers in these regions for which data are available. Given that the advection of warm, moist air masses and rainfall over Greenland is expected to become more frequent in the coming decades, our findings portend a previously unforeseen vulnerability of the Greenland ice sheet to climate change.
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| 2. |
- Kulessa, Bernd, et al.
(författare)
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Seismic evidence for complex sedimentary control of Greenland Ice Sheet flow
- 2017
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Ingår i: Science Advances. - : American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). - 2375-2548. ; 3:8
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The land-terminating margin of the Greenland Ice Sheet has slowed down in recent decades, although the causes and implications for future ice flow are unclear. Explained originally by a self-regulating mechanism where basal slip reduces as drainage evolves from low to high efficiency, recent numerical modeling invokes a sedimentary control of ice sheet flow as an alternative hypothesis. Although both hypotheses can explain the recent slowdown, their respective forecasts of a long-term deceleration versus an acceleration of ice flow are contradictory. We present amplitude-versus-angle seismic data as the first observational test of the alternative hypothesis. We document transient modifications of basal sediment strengths by rapid subglacial drainages of supraglacial lakes, the primary current control on summer ice sheet flow according to our numerical model. Our observations agree with simulations of initial postdrainage sediment weakening and ice flow accelerations, and subsequent sediment restrengthening and ice flow decelerations, and thus confirm the alternative hypothesis. Although simulated melt season acceleration of ice flow due to weakening of subglacial sediments does not currently outweigh winter slowdown forced by self regulation, they could dominate over the longer term. Subglacial sediments beneath the Greenland Ice Sheet must therefore be mapped and characterized, and a sedimentary control of ice flow must be evaluated against competing self-regulation mechanisms.
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| 3. |
- Løkkegaard, Anja, et al.
(författare)
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Greenland and Canadian Arctic ice temperature profiles database
- 2023
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Ingår i: The Cryosphere. - : Copernicus Publications. - 1994-0416 .- 1994-0424. ; 17:9, s. 3829-3845
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Here, we present a compilation of 95 ice temperature profiles from 85 boreholes from the Greenland ice sheet and peripheral ice caps, as well as local ice caps in the Canadian Arctic. Profiles from only 31 boreholes (36 %) were previously available in open-access data repositories. The remaining 54 borehole profiles (64 %) are being made digitally available here for the first time. These newly available profiles, which are associated with pre-2010 boreholes, have been submitted by community members or digitized from published graphics and/or data tables. All 95 profiles are now made available in both absolute (meters) and normalized (0 to 1 ice thickness) depth scales and are accompanied by extensive metadata. These metadata include a transparent description of data provenance. The ice temperature profiles span 70 years, with the earliest profile being from 1950 at Camp VI, West Greenland. To highlight the value of this database in evaluating ice flow simulations, we compare the ice temperature profiles from the Greenland ice sheet with an ice flow simulation by the Parallel Ice Sheet Model (PISM). We find a cold bias in modeled near-surface ice temperatures within the ablation area, a warm bias in modeled basal ice temperatures at inland cold-bedded sites, and an apparent underestimation of deformational heating in high-strain settings. These biases provide process level insight on simulated ice temperatures.
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| 4. |
- Pettersson, Rickard, et al.
(författare)
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Ice thickness and basal conditions of Vestfonna ice cap, eastern Svalbard
- 2011
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Ingår i: Geografiska Annaler. Series A, Physical Geography. - : Informa UK Limited. - 0435-3676 .- 1468-0459. ; 93A:4, s. 311-322
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We combined ground-based pulsed radar data collected in 20082009 with airborne radio-echo sounding data acquired in 1983 and 1986 over Vestfonna ice cap, Svalbard. The airborne dataset mainly covers the fast-flowing outlet glaciers and the marginal zone, while the ground-based data explicitly cover the interior part of the ice cap. The data presented here are thus the first complete estimate of bed topography and ice thickness. The subglacial landscape undulates with elevations between -160 and +410 m above sea level. The mean ice thickness is 186 m and the total ice area and volume are 2402 km2 and 442 +/- 0.6 km3, respectively. This is a much smaller volume than those derived from empirical volume-area scaling relationships currently used to estimate regional-to-global glacier volumes. This difference may depend on local conditions for Vestfonna and emphasizes the need to include more volume observations in the derivations of volume-area scaling parameters. We also derive basal reflectivity as a proxy for thermal conditions at the bed. Basal reflectivity values suggest that fast-flowing outlet glaciers are underlain by temperate conditions. The geometric boundaries and basal conditions for Vestfonna will be critical additions to the development of numerical models of the ice cap and to the estimation of more accurate area-volume scaling parameters.
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| 5. |
- Pohjola, Veijo A, 1960-, et al.
(författare)
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Spatial distribution and change in the surface ice-velocity field of Vestfonna ice cap, Nordaustlandet, Svalbard, 1995-2010 using geodetic and satellite interferometry data
- 2011
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Ingår i: Geografiska Annaler. Series A, Physical Geography. - : Informa UK Limited. - 0435-3676 .- 1468-0459. ; 93:4, s. 323-335
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- During 2007 we launched a geodetic campaign on the Svalbard ice cap Vestfonna in order to estimate the velocity field of the ice cap. This was done within the frame of the IPY project KINNVIKA. We present here the velocity measurements derived from our campaigns 2007–2010 and compare the geodetic measurements against InSAR velocity fields from satellite platforms from 1995/96 and 2008. We find the spatial distribution of ice speeds from the InSAR is in good agreement within the uncertainty limits with our geodetic measurements. We observe no clear indication of seasonal ice speed differences, but we find a speed-up of the outlet glacier Franklinbreen between the InSAR campaigns, and speculate the outlet is having a surge phase.
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