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Large ice loss variability at Nioghalvfjerdsfjorden Glacier, Northeast-Greenland

Nioghalvfjerdsfjorden is a major outlet glacier in Northeast-Greenland. Although earlier studies showed that the floating part near the grounding line thinned by 30% between 1999 and 2014, the temporal ice loss evolution, its relation to external forcing and the implications for the grounded ice she...

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Autores principales: Mayer, Christoph, Schaffer, Janin, Hattermann, Tore, Floricioiu, Dana, Krieger, Lukas, Dodd, Paul A., Kanzow, Torsten, Licciulli, Carlo, Schannwell, Clemens
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2018
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6050287/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30018326
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-05180-x
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author Mayer, Christoph
Schaffer, Janin
Hattermann, Tore
Floricioiu, Dana
Krieger, Lukas
Dodd, Paul A.
Kanzow, Torsten
Licciulli, Carlo
Schannwell, Clemens
author_facet Mayer, Christoph
Schaffer, Janin
Hattermann, Tore
Floricioiu, Dana
Krieger, Lukas
Dodd, Paul A.
Kanzow, Torsten
Licciulli, Carlo
Schannwell, Clemens
author_sort Mayer, Christoph
collection PubMed
description Nioghalvfjerdsfjorden is a major outlet glacier in Northeast-Greenland. Although earlier studies showed that the floating part near the grounding line thinned by 30% between 1999 and 2014, the temporal ice loss evolution, its relation to external forcing and the implications for the grounded ice sheet remain largely unclear. By combining observations of surface features, ice thickness and bedrock data, we find that the ice shelf mass balance has been out of equilibrium since 2001, with large variations of the thinning rates on annual/multiannual time scales. Changes in ice flux and surface ablation are too small to produce this variability. An increased ocean heat flux is the most plausible cause of the observed thinning. For sustained environmental conditions, the ice shelf will lose large parts of its area within a few decades and ice modeling shows a significant, but locally restricted thinning upstream of the grounding line in response.
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spelling pubmed-60502872018-07-23 Large ice loss variability at Nioghalvfjerdsfjorden Glacier, Northeast-Greenland Mayer, Christoph Schaffer, Janin Hattermann, Tore Floricioiu, Dana Krieger, Lukas Dodd, Paul A. Kanzow, Torsten Licciulli, Carlo Schannwell, Clemens Nat Commun Article Nioghalvfjerdsfjorden is a major outlet glacier in Northeast-Greenland. Although earlier studies showed that the floating part near the grounding line thinned by 30% between 1999 and 2014, the temporal ice loss evolution, its relation to external forcing and the implications for the grounded ice sheet remain largely unclear. By combining observations of surface features, ice thickness and bedrock data, we find that the ice shelf mass balance has been out of equilibrium since 2001, with large variations of the thinning rates on annual/multiannual time scales. Changes in ice flux and surface ablation are too small to produce this variability. An increased ocean heat flux is the most plausible cause of the observed thinning. For sustained environmental conditions, the ice shelf will lose large parts of its area within a few decades and ice modeling shows a significant, but locally restricted thinning upstream of the grounding line in response. Nature Publishing Group UK 2018-07-17 /pmc/articles/PMC6050287/ /pubmed/30018326 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-05180-x Text en © The Author(s) 2018 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
spellingShingle Article
Mayer, Christoph
Schaffer, Janin
Hattermann, Tore
Floricioiu, Dana
Krieger, Lukas
Dodd, Paul A.
Kanzow, Torsten
Licciulli, Carlo
Schannwell, Clemens
Large ice loss variability at Nioghalvfjerdsfjorden Glacier, Northeast-Greenland
title Large ice loss variability at Nioghalvfjerdsfjorden Glacier, Northeast-Greenland
title_full Large ice loss variability at Nioghalvfjerdsfjorden Glacier, Northeast-Greenland
title_fullStr Large ice loss variability at Nioghalvfjerdsfjorden Glacier, Northeast-Greenland
title_full_unstemmed Large ice loss variability at Nioghalvfjerdsfjorden Glacier, Northeast-Greenland
title_short Large ice loss variability at Nioghalvfjerdsfjorden Glacier, Northeast-Greenland
title_sort large ice loss variability at nioghalvfjerdsfjorden glacier, northeast-greenland
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6050287/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30018326
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-05180-x
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