After three years of cold conditions, warm water has returned to Ilulissat Icefjord, home to Jakobshavn Isbrae-Greenland's largest outlet glacier. Jakobshavn has slowed and thickened since 2016, when waters near the glacier cooled from 3 °C to 1.5 °C. Fjord temperatures remained cold through at least the end of 2019, but in March 2020, temperatures in the fjord warmed to 2.8 °C. As a result of the warming, we forecast that Jakobshavn Isbrae will accelerate and resume thinning during the 2020 melt season. The fjord's profound in uence on glacier behavior, and the connectivity between fjord conditions and regional ocean climate imply a degree of predictability that we aim to test with this forecast. Given the global importance of sea-level rise, we must advance our ability to forecast such rapidly changing systems, and this work represents an important rst step in glacier forecasting.
[1] We present three-dimensional, high-resolution simulations of ice melting at the calving face of Store Glacier, a tidewater glacier in West Greenland, using the Massachusetts Institute of Technology general circulation model. We compare the simulated ice melt with an estimate derived from oceanographic data. The simulations show turbulent upwelling and spreading of the freshwater-laden plume along the ice face and the vigorous melting of ice at rates of meters per day. The simulated August 2010 melt rate of 2.0˙0.3 m/d is within uncertainties of the melt rate of 3.0˙1.0 m/d calculated from oceanographic data. Melting is greatest at depth, above the subglacial channels, causing glacier undercutting. Melt rates increase proportionally to thermal forcing raised to the power of 1.2-1.6 and to subglacial water flux raised to the power of 0.5-0.9. Therefore, in a warmer climate, Store Glacier melting by ocean may increase from both increased ocean temperature and subglacial discharge. Citation: Xu, Y., E. Rignot, I. Fenty, D. Menemenlis, and M. Mar Flexas (2013), Subaqueous melting of Store Glacier, west Greenland from three-dimensional, high-resolution numerical modeling and ocean observations, Geophys. Res. Lett., 40, 4648-4653, doi:10.1002/grl.50825.
After 8 years of decay of its ice shelf, Zachariæ Isstrøm, a major glacier of northeast Greenland that holds a 0.5-meter sea-level rise equivalent, entered a phase of accelerated retreat in fall 2012. The acceleration rate of its ice velocity tripled, melting of its residual ice shelf and thinning of its grounded portion doubled, and calving is now occurring at its grounding line. Warmer air and ocean temperatures have caused the glacier to detach from a stabilizing sill and retreat rapidly along a downward-sloping, marine-based bed. Its equal-ice-volume neighbor, Nioghalvfjerdsfjorden, is also melting rapidly but retreating slowly along an upward-sloping bed. The destabilization of this marine-based sector will increase sea-level rise from the Greenland Ice Sheet for decades to come.
The retreat and acceleration of Greenland glaciers since the mid-1990s have been attributed to the enhanced intrusion of warm Atlantic Waters (AW) into fjords, but this assertion has not been quantitatively tested on a Greenland-wide basis or included in models. Here, we investigate how AW influenced retreat at 226 marine-terminating glaciers using ocean modeling, remote sensing, and in situ observations. We identify 74 glaciers in deep fjords with AW controlling 49% of the mass loss that retreated when warming increased undercutting by 48%. Conversely, 27 glaciers calving on shallow ridges and 24 in cold, shallow waters retreated little, contributing 15% of the loss, while 10 glaciers retreated substantially following the collapse of several ice shelves. The retreat mechanisms remain undiagnosed at 87 glaciers without ocean and bathymetry data, which controlled 19% of the loss. Ice sheet projections that exclude ocean-induced undercutting may underestimate mass loss by at least a factor of 2.
Marine‐terminating glaciers control most of Greenland's ice discharge into the ocean, but little is known about the geometry of their frontal regions. Here we use side‐looking, multibeam echo sounding observations to reveal that their frontal ice cliffs are grounded deeper below sea level than previously measured and their ice faces are neither vertical nor smooth but often undercut by the ocean and rough. Deep glacier grounding enables contact with subsurface, warm, salty Atlantic waters (AW) which melts ice at rates of meters per day. We detect cavities undercutting the base of the calving faces at the sites of subglacial water (SGW) discharge predicted by a hydrological model. The observed pattern of undercutting is consistent with numerical simulations of ice melt in which buoyant plumes of SGW transport warm AW to the ice faces. Glacier undercutting likely enhances iceberg calving, impacting ice front stability and, in turn, the glacier mass balance.
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