Meltwater Retention and Refreezing Processes in Glacier Snow and Firn ...

• Main Author: Samimi, Samira
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Arts 2020
• Subjects: Glaciology; Ice Sheet Hydrology; Meltwater Retention; Climate Change; Hydrology; Geography; Greenland; glacier; Ice Sheet
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.11575/prism/39512; https://prism.ucalgary.ca/handle/1880/114297

Glacier mass losses from all the regions of the world are a strong indication of global warming. The sum of glacier and ice sheet contributions is the dominant source of global sea level rise over the past two decades, and mass loss from the Greenland Ice Sheet is increasing due to significant increases in surface melt and runoff. A fraction of summer meltwater is retained as liquid water or refrozen ice as meltwater percolates into cold (sub-zero) underlying snow and firn, which helps to reduce the summer runoff. However, there are challenges to quantifying both infiltration and refreezing of meltwater in heterogeneous snow and firn and to understanding the spatial variability of these processes. In this study, I introduce a new method to continuously monitor meltwater infiltration and refreezing in snow and firn, applying Time Domain Reflectometry (TDR) measurements of dielectric permittivity as an indirect measure of snow/firn liquid water content. To my knowledge, this is the first application of TDR to ...