Brief communication: Preliminary ICESat-2 (Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite-2) measurements of outlet glaciers reveal heterogeneous patterns of seasonal dynamic thickness change
<p>Dynamic changes of marine-terminating outlet glaciers are projected to be responsible for about half of future ice loss from the Greenland Ice Sheet. However, we lack a unified, process-based understanding that can explain the observed dynamic changes of all outlet glaciers. Many glaciers u...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Copernicus Publications
2022-04-01
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| Series: | The Cryosphere |
| Online Access: | https://tc.copernicus.org/articles/16/1341/2022/tc-16-1341-2022.pdf |
| Summary: | <p>Dynamic changes of marine-terminating outlet glaciers are projected to be
responsible for about half of future ice loss from the Greenland Ice Sheet.
However, we lack a unified, process-based understanding that can explain the
observed dynamic changes of all outlet glaciers. Many glaciers undergo
seasonal dynamic thickness changes, and classifying the patterns of seasonal
thickness change can improve our understanding of the processes that drive
glacier behavior. The Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite-2 (ICESat-2)
provides space-based, seasonally repeating altimetry measurements of the ice
sheets, allowing us to quantify near-termini seasonal dynamic thickness
patterns of 37 outlet glaciers around the Greenland Ice Sheet. We classify
the glaciers into seven common patterns of seasonal thickness change over a
2-year period from 2019 to 2020. We find small groupings of neighboring
glaciers with similar patterns of seasonal thickness change, but, within larger
sectors of the ice sheet, patterns of seasonal thickness change are mostly
heterogeneous. Future studies can build upon our results by extending these
time series, comparing seasonal dynamic thickness changes with external
forcings, such as ocean temperature and meltwater runoff, and with other
dynamic variables such as seasonal glacier velocity and terminus position
changes.</p> |
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| ISSN: | 1994-0416 1994-0424 |