Journal
GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS
Volume 42, Issue 14, Pages 5902-5908Publisher
AMER GEOPHYSICAL UNION
DOI: 10.1002/2015GL064349
Keywords
Alaska glaciers; tidewater glaciers; mass balance; Operation IceBridge
Categories
Funding
- NASA [NNX13AD52A, NNX15AG21G, NNX11AF41G]
- U.S. Geological Survey Climate and Land Use Research and Development Program
- Alaska Climate Science Center
- NASA [805121, NNX11AF41G, 146247, NNX13AD52A, NNX15AG21G, 475661] Funding Source: Federal RePORTER
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Mountain glaciers comprise a small and widely distributed fraction of the world's terrestrial ice, yet their rapid losses presently drive a large percentage of the cryosphere's contribution to sea level rise. Regional mass balance assessments are challenging over large glacier populations due to remote and rugged geography, variable response of individual glaciers to climate change, and episodic calving losses from tidewater glaciers. In Alaska, we use airborne altimetry from 116 glaciers to estimate a regional mass balance of -75 +/- 11 Gt yr(-1) (1994-2013). Our glacier sample is spatially well distributed, yet pervasive variability in mass balances obscures geospatial and climatic relationships. However, for the first time, these data allow the partitioning of regional mass balance by glacier type. We find that tidewater glaciers are losing mass at substantially slower rates than other glaciers in Alaska and collectively contribute to only 6% of the regional mass loss.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available