Six decades of glacial mass loss in the Canadian arctic archipelago

• Published in: Journal of Geophysical Research: Earth Surface
• Main Authors: Noël, Brice, van de Berg, Willem Jan, Lhermitte, Stef, Wouters, Bert, Schaffer, Nicole, van den Broeke, Michiel R.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2018
• Subjects: Earth-Surface Processes; Geophysics; Physical; chemical; mathematical & earth Sciences; Earth sciences & physical geography; Physique; chimie; mathématiques & sciences de la terre; Sciences de la terre & géographie physique; Arctic; Canadian Arctic Archipelago; albedo; Arctic Archipelago; Baffin
• Online Access: https://orbi.uliege.be/handle/2268/301913; https://orbi.uliege.be/bitstream/2268/301913/1/Noel_JGR_2018.pdf; https://doi.org/10.1029/2017JF004304

peer reviewed The Canadian Arctic Archipelago comprises multiple small glaciers and ice caps, mostly concentrated on Ellesmere and Baffin Islands in the northern (NCAA, Northern Canadian Arctic Archipelago) and southern parts (SCAA, Southern Canadian Arctic Archipelago) of the archipelago, respectively. Because these glaciers are small and show complex geometries, current regional climate models, using 5- to 20-km horizontal resolution, do not properly resolve surface mass balance patterns. Here we present a 58-year (1958-2015) reconstruction of daily surface mass balance of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, statistically downscaled to 1 km from the output of the regional climate model RACMO2.3 at 11 km. By correcting for biases in elevation and ice albedo, the downscaling method significantly improves runoff estimates over narrow outlet glaciers and isolated ice fields. Since the last two decades, NCAA and SCAA glaciers have experienced warmer conditions (+1.1°C) resulting in continued mass loss of 28.2 ± 11.5 and 22.0 ± 4.5 Gt/year, respectively, more than doubling (11.9 Gt/year) and doubling (11.9 Gt/year) the pre-1996 average. While the interior of NCAA ice caps can still buffer most of the additional melt, the lack of a perennial firn area over low-lying SCAA glaciers has caused uninterrupted mass loss since the 1980s. In the absence of significant refreezing capacity, this indicates inevitable disappearance of these highly sensitive glaciers.