Journal
CRYOSPHERE
Volume 7, Issue 4, Pages 1185-1192Publisher
COPERNICUS GESELLSCHAFT MBH
DOI: 10.5194/tc-7-1185-2013
Keywords
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Funding
- National Science Foundation's Office of Polar Programs (NSF-OPP) [ARC-0520382, ARC-1023382, NNX10AI33G, ARC-0520077, ARC-1023364, NNX10AI30G]
- National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) Cryospheric Sciences Program [ARC-0520382, ARC-1023382, NNX10AI33G, ARC-0520077, ARC-1023364, NNX10AI30G]
- Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC)
- Canada Research Chairs Program (CRC)
- NSF [ANT-0424589, ARC-0909335]
- NERC
- Australian Research Council Future Fellowship [FT110100207]
- Directorate For Geosciences [1023364] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
- Office of Polar Programs (OPP) [1023382] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
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Supraglacial lakes play an important role in establishing hydrological connections that allow lubricating seasonal meltwater to reach the base of the Greenland Ice Sheet. Here we use new surface velocity observations to examine the influence of supraglacial lake drainages and surface melt rate on ice flow. We find large, spatially extensive speedups concurrent with times of lake drainage, showing that lakes play a key role in modulating regional ice flow. While surface meltwater is supplied to the bed via a geographically sparse network of moulins, the observed ice-flow enhancement suggests that this meltwater spreads widely over the ice-sheet bed. We also find that the complex spatial pattern of speedup is strongly determined by the combined influence of bed and surface topography on subglacial water flow. Thus, modeling of ice-sheet basal hydrology likely will require knowledge of bed topography resolved at scales (sub-kilometer) far finer than existing data (several km).
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