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Estimating Greenland tidewater glacier retreat driven by submarine melting

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Slater_2019_Cryo_Estim_VoR_CCBY.pdf (2.525Mb)
Date
26/09/2019
Author
Slater, Donald A.
Straneo, Fiamma
Felikson, Denis
Little, Christopher M.
Goelzer, Heiko
Fettweis, Xavier
Holte, James
Keywords
GE Environmental Sciences
Water Science and Technology
Earth-Surface Processes
3rd-DAS
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Abstract
The effect of the North Atlantic Ocean on the Greenland Ice Sheet through submarine melting of Greenland's tidewater glacier calving fronts is thought to be a key driver of widespread glacier retreat, dynamic mass loss and sea level contribution from the ice sheet. Despite its critical importance, problems of process complexity and scale hinder efforts to represent the influence of submarine melting in ice-sheet-scale models. Here we propose parameterizing tidewater glacier terminus position as a simple linear function of submarine melting, with submarine melting in turn estimated as a function of subglacial discharge and ocean temperature. The relationship is tested, calibrated and validated using datasets of terminus position, subglacial discharge and ocean temperature covering the full ice sheet and surrounding ocean from the period 1960–2018. We demonstrate a statistically significant link between multi-decadal tidewater glacier terminus position change and submarine melting and show that the proposed parameterization has predictive power when considering a population of glaciers. An illustrative 21st century projection is considered, suggesting that tidewater glaciers in Greenland will undergo little further retreat in a low-emission RCP2.6 scenario. In contrast, a high-emission RCP8.5 scenario results in a median retreat of 4.2 km, with a quarter of tidewater glaciers experiencing retreat exceeding 10 km. Our study provides a long-term and ice-sheet-wide assessment of the sensitivity of tidewater glaciers to submarine melting and proposes a practical and empirically validated means of incorporating ocean forcing into models of the Greenland ice sheet.
Citation
Slater , D A , Straneo , F , Felikson , D , Little , C M , Goelzer , H , Fettweis , X & Holte , J 2019 , ' Estimating Greenland tidewater glacier retreat driven by submarine melting ' , Cryosphere , vol. 13 , no. 9 , pp. 2489-2509 . https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-13-2489-2019
Publication
Cryosphere
Status
Peer reviewed
DOI
https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-13-2489-2019
ISSN
1994-0416
Type
Journal article
Rights
© Author(s) 2019. This work is distributed underthe Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License
Description
This research has been supported by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Goddard Space Flight Center (postdoctoral program grant), the National Science Foundation, Office of Polar Programs (grant no. 1513396), the Netherlands Earth System Science Centre (grant no. 024.002.001), the Fonds De La Recherche Scientifique – FNRS (grant no. 2.5020.11),the Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles (grant no. 1117545), the National Science Foundation, Division of Polar Programs (grant no. 1916566), the National Science Foundation, Office of Polar Programs (grant no. 1756272) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (grant no. NNX17AI03G).
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  • University of St Andrews Research
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/10023/19651

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