Tony D. James

Extensive Retreat of Greenland Tidewater Glaciers, 2000–2010

Abstract Overall mass loss from the Greenland ice sheet nearly doubled during the early 2000s resulting in an increased contribution to sea-level rise, with this step-change being mainly attributed to the widespread frontal retreat and accompanying dynamic thinning of tidewater glaciers. Changes in glacier calving-front positions are easily derived from remotely sensed imagery and provide a record of dynamic change. However, ice-sheet-wide studies of calving fronts have been either spatially or temporally limited. In this study multiple calving-front positions were derived for 199 Greenland marine-terminating outlet glaciers with width greater than 1 km using Landsat imagery for the 11-year period 2000–2010 in order to identify regional seasonal and inter-annual variations. During this period, outlet glaciers were characterized by sustained and substantial retreat summing to more than 267 km, with only 11 glaciers showing overall advance. In general, the pattern of mass loss detected by GRACE (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment) and other measurements is reflected in the calving record of Greenland glaciers. Our results suggest several regions in the south and east of the ice sheet likely share controls on their dynamic changes, but no simple single control is apparent.

Annual down-glacier drainage of lakes and water-filled crevasses at Helheim Glacier, southeast Greenland

Supraglacial lake drainage events are common on the Greenland Ice Sheet. Observations on the west coast typically show an up-glacier progression of drainage as the annual melt extent spreads inland. We use a suite of remote sensing and modelling techniques in order to study a series of lakes and water-filled crevasses within 20km of the terminus of Helheim Glacier, south east Greenland. Automatic classification of surface water areas shows a down-glacier progression of drainage, which occurs in the majority of years between 2007 and 2014. We demonstrate that a linear elastic fracture mechanics model can reliably predict the drainage of the uppermost supraglacial lake in the system, but cannot explain the pattern of filling and draining observed in areas of surface water downstream. We propose that the water levels in crevasses downstream of the supraglacial lake can be explained by a transient high-pressure wave passing through the subglacial system following the lake drainage. We support this hypothesis with analysis of the subglacial hydrological conditions, which can explain both the position and interannual variation in filling order of these crevasses. Similar behaviour has been observed in association with jokulhaups, surging glaciers, and Antarctic subglacial lakes, but has not previously been observed on major outlets of the Greenland Ice Sheet. Our results suggest that the behaviour of near-terminus surface water may differ considerably from that of inland supraglacial lakes, with the potential for basal water pressures to influence the presence of surface water in crevasses close to the terminus of tidewater glaciers.