Precursor of disintegration of Greenland's largest floating ice tongue
The largest floating tongue of Greenland's ice sheet, Nioghalvfjerdsbr & UAELIG;, has been relatively stable with respect to areal retreat until 2022.Draining more than 6 % of the ice sheet, a disintegration of Nioghalvfjerdsbr & UAELIG;'s floating tongue and subsequent acceleratio...
Published in: | The Cryosphere |
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2023
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Online Access: | https://orbit.dtu.dk/en/publications/df76d589-4496-4e44-9faa-a8075a07331a https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-17-2851-2023 https://backend.orbit.dtu.dk/ws/files/331900001/tc_17_2851_2023.pdf |
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ftdtupubl:oai:pure.atira.dk:publications/df76d589-4496-4e44-9faa-a8075a07331a 2024-09-15T18:12:22+00:00 Precursor of disintegration of Greenland's largest floating ice tongue Humbert, Angelika Helm, Veit Neckel, Niklas Zeising, Ole Rueckamp, Martin Khan, Shfaqat Abbas Loebel, Erik Brauchle, Joerg Stebner, Karsten Gross, Dietmar Sondershaus, Rabea Mueller, Ralf 2023 application/pdf https://orbit.dtu.dk/en/publications/df76d589-4496-4e44-9faa-a8075a07331a https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-17-2851-2023 https://backend.orbit.dtu.dk/ws/files/331900001/tc_17_2851_2023.pdf eng eng https://orbit.dtu.dk/en/publications/df76d589-4496-4e44-9faa-a8075a07331a info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess Humbert , A , Helm , V , Neckel , N , Zeising , O , Rueckamp , M , Khan , S A , Loebel , E , Brauchle , J , Stebner , K , Gross , D , Sondershaus , R & Mueller , R 2023 , ' Precursor of disintegration of Greenland's largest floating ice tongue ' , Cryosphere , vol. 17 , no. 7 , pp. 2851-2870 . https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-17-2851-2023 article 2023 ftdtupubl https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-17-2851-2023 2024-08-13T00:03:07Z The largest floating tongue of Greenland's ice sheet, Nioghalvfjerdsbr & UAELIG;, has been relatively stable with respect to areal retreat until 2022.Draining more than 6 % of the ice sheet, a disintegration of Nioghalvfjerdsbr & UAELIG;'s floating tongue and subsequent acceleration due to loss in buttressing are likely to lead to sea level rise. Therefore, the stability of the floating tongue is a focus of this study. We employed a suite of observational methods to detect recent changes at the calving front. We found that the calving style has changed since 2016 at the southern part of the eastern calving front, from tongue-type calving to a crack evolution initiated at frontal ice rises reaching 5-7 km and progressing further upstream compared to 2010. The calving front area is further weakened by an areaupstream of the main calving front that consists of open water and an ice melange that has substantially expanded, leading to the formation of a narrow ice bridge. These geometric and mechanical changes may be a precursor of instability of the floating tongue. We complement our study by numerical ice flow simulations to estimate the impact of future ice-front retreat and complete ice shelf disintegration on the discharge of grounded ice. These idealized scenarios reveal that a loss of the south-eastern area of the ice shelf would lead to a 0.2 % increase in ice discharge at the grounding line, while a sudden collapse of the frontal area (46 % of the floating tongue area) will enhance the ice discharge by 5.1 % due to loss in buttressing. Eventually, a full collapse of the floating tongue increases the grounding line flux by 166 %. Article in Journal/Newspaper Ice Sheet Ice Shelf Technical University of Denmark: DTU Orbit The Cryosphere 17 7 2851 2870 |
institution |
Open Polar |
collection |
Technical University of Denmark: DTU Orbit |
op_collection_id |
ftdtupubl |
language |
English |
description |
The largest floating tongue of Greenland's ice sheet, Nioghalvfjerdsbr & UAELIG;, has been relatively stable with respect to areal retreat until 2022.Draining more than 6 % of the ice sheet, a disintegration of Nioghalvfjerdsbr & UAELIG;'s floating tongue and subsequent acceleration due to loss in buttressing are likely to lead to sea level rise. Therefore, the stability of the floating tongue is a focus of this study. We employed a suite of observational methods to detect recent changes at the calving front. We found that the calving style has changed since 2016 at the southern part of the eastern calving front, from tongue-type calving to a crack evolution initiated at frontal ice rises reaching 5-7 km and progressing further upstream compared to 2010. The calving front area is further weakened by an areaupstream of the main calving front that consists of open water and an ice melange that has substantially expanded, leading to the formation of a narrow ice bridge. These geometric and mechanical changes may be a precursor of instability of the floating tongue. We complement our study by numerical ice flow simulations to estimate the impact of future ice-front retreat and complete ice shelf disintegration on the discharge of grounded ice. These idealized scenarios reveal that a loss of the south-eastern area of the ice shelf would lead to a 0.2 % increase in ice discharge at the grounding line, while a sudden collapse of the frontal area (46 % of the floating tongue area) will enhance the ice discharge by 5.1 % due to loss in buttressing. Eventually, a full collapse of the floating tongue increases the grounding line flux by 166 %. |
format |
Article in Journal/Newspaper |
author |
Humbert, Angelika Helm, Veit Neckel, Niklas Zeising, Ole Rueckamp, Martin Khan, Shfaqat Abbas Loebel, Erik Brauchle, Joerg Stebner, Karsten Gross, Dietmar Sondershaus, Rabea Mueller, Ralf |
spellingShingle |
Humbert, Angelika Helm, Veit Neckel, Niklas Zeising, Ole Rueckamp, Martin Khan, Shfaqat Abbas Loebel, Erik Brauchle, Joerg Stebner, Karsten Gross, Dietmar Sondershaus, Rabea Mueller, Ralf Precursor of disintegration of Greenland's largest floating ice tongue |
author_facet |
Humbert, Angelika Helm, Veit Neckel, Niklas Zeising, Ole Rueckamp, Martin Khan, Shfaqat Abbas Loebel, Erik Brauchle, Joerg Stebner, Karsten Gross, Dietmar Sondershaus, Rabea Mueller, Ralf |
author_sort |
Humbert, Angelika |
title |
Precursor of disintegration of Greenland's largest floating ice tongue |
title_short |
Precursor of disintegration of Greenland's largest floating ice tongue |
title_full |
Precursor of disintegration of Greenland's largest floating ice tongue |
title_fullStr |
Precursor of disintegration of Greenland's largest floating ice tongue |
title_full_unstemmed |
Precursor of disintegration of Greenland's largest floating ice tongue |
title_sort |
precursor of disintegration of greenland's largest floating ice tongue |
publishDate |
2023 |
url |
https://orbit.dtu.dk/en/publications/df76d589-4496-4e44-9faa-a8075a07331a https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-17-2851-2023 https://backend.orbit.dtu.dk/ws/files/331900001/tc_17_2851_2023.pdf |
genre |
Ice Sheet Ice Shelf |
genre_facet |
Ice Sheet Ice Shelf |
op_source |
Humbert , A , Helm , V , Neckel , N , Zeising , O , Rueckamp , M , Khan , S A , Loebel , E , Brauchle , J , Stebner , K , Gross , D , Sondershaus , R & Mueller , R 2023 , ' Precursor of disintegration of Greenland's largest floating ice tongue ' , Cryosphere , vol. 17 , no. 7 , pp. 2851-2870 . https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-17-2851-2023 |
op_relation |
https://orbit.dtu.dk/en/publications/df76d589-4496-4e44-9faa-a8075a07331a |
op_rights |
info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-17-2851-2023 |
container_title |
The Cryosphere |
container_volume |
17 |
container_issue |
7 |
container_start_page |
2851 |
op_container_end_page |
2870 |
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1810449946198933504 |