Ice-ocean interactions in Milne Fiord ...

• Main Author: Hamilton, Andrew Kent
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: University of British Columbia 2016
• Subjects: Arctic; Ellesmere Island; Ice Shelf; Ice Shelves; Milne Fiord; Milne Ice Shelf
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.14288/1.0314106; https://doi.library.ubc.ca/10.14288/1.0314106

Widespread break up of ice shelves, glacier tongues, and the loss of ice-dammed epishelf lakes on the northern coast of Ellesmere Island has motivated a need to understand fjord dynamics, yet the oceanography of fjords here is not well studied. Here, we present ocean profiling and mooring data collected from 2011 to 2015 in Milne Fiord, the last ice shelf-epishelf lake-glacier tongue fjord in the Arctic. The data reveal that seasonal and interannual variations of fjord water properties and circulation are strongly impacted by the presence of the Milne Ice Shelf. The ice shelf forms a floating dam that traps surface runoff resulting in strong stratification and an elevated fjord heat content. Water exchange below the ice shelf is restricted to a narrow basal channel, prolonging the export of fjord-modified water, including subglacial runoff, by several months. In contrast, intermediate waters that penetrate to the Milne Glacier grounding line are freely exchanged and respond to offshore variations, with ...