Journal
JOURNAL OF GLACIOLOGY
Volume 63, Issue 238, Pages 288-308Publisher
CAMBRIDGE UNIV PRESS
DOI: 10.1017/jog.2016.138
Keywords
glacier calving; glacier discharge; glacier mass balance; ice/ocean interactions; ice/atmosphere interactions; tidewater glaciers
Funding
- US National Science Foundation (NSF) Office of Polar Programs (OPP) [NSF PLR-0909552, NSF PLR-0909333]
- NASA under the Earth and Space Science Fellowship Program [NNX14AL29H]
- IIKNN (Greenland)
- DEFROST project of the Nordic Centre of Excellence program Interaction between Climate Change and the Cryosphere
- Danish Council Research for Independent Research [DFF-409000151]
- Greenland Ecosystem Monitoring Programme
- Canada Excellence Research Chair Programme
- Geophysical Institute
- University of Alaska Fairbanks
- Greenland Climate Research Centre
- NASA [680428, NNX14AL29H] Funding Source: Federal RePORTER
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We assess ice loss and velocity changes between 1985 and 2014 of three tidewater and fiveland terminating glaciers in Godthabsfjord (Nuup Kangerlua), Greenland. Glacier thinning accounted for 43.8 +/- 0.2 km(3) of ice loss, equivalent to 0.10 mm eustatic sea-level rise. An additional 3.5 +/- 0.3 km(3) was lost to the calving retreats of Kangiata Nunaata Sermia (KNS) and Narsap Sermia (NS), two tidewater glaciers that exhibited asynchronous behavior over the study period. KNS has retreated 22 km from its Little Ice Age (LIA) maximum (1761 AD), of which 0.8 km since 1985. KNS has stabilized in shallow water, but seasonally advects a 2 km long floating tongue. In contrast, NS began retreating from its LIA moraine in 2004-06 (0.6 km), re-stabilized, then retreated 3.3 km during 2010-14 into an over-deepened basin. Velocities at KNS ranged 5-6 km a(-1), while at NS they increased from 1.5 to 5.5 km a(-1) between 2004 and 2014. We present comprehensive analyses of glacier thinning, runoff, surface mass balance, ocean conditions, submarine melting, bed topography, ice melange and conclude that the 2010-14 NS retreat was triggered by a combination of factors but primarily by an increase in submarine melting.
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