Dynamic response of the Greenland ice sheet to recent cooling
The subglacial hydrological system critically controls ice motion at the margins of the Greenland Ice Sheet. However, over multi-annual timescales, the net impact of hydro-dynamic coupling on ice motion remains poorly understood. Here, we present annual ice velocities from 1992–2019 across a ~10,600...
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ftpubmed:oai:pubmedcentral.nih.gov:6997348 2023-05-15T16:26:01+02:00 Dynamic response of the Greenland ice sheet to recent cooling Williams, Joshua J. Gourmelen, Noel Nienow, Peter 2020-02-03 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6997348/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32015394 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-58355-2 en eng Nature Publishing Group UK http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6997348/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32015394 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-58355-2 © The Author(s) 2020 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. CC-BY Article Text 2020 ftpubmed https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-58355-2 2020-02-16T01:22:44Z The subglacial hydrological system critically controls ice motion at the margins of the Greenland Ice Sheet. However, over multi-annual timescales, the net impact of hydro-dynamic coupling on ice motion remains poorly understood. Here, we present annual ice velocities from 1992–2019 across a ~10,600 km(2) land-terminating area of southwest Greenland. From the early-2000s through to ~2012, we observe a slowdown in ice motion in response to increased surface melt, consistent with previous research. From 2013 to 2019 however, we observe an acceleration in ice motion coincident with atmospheric cooling and a ~15% reduction in mean surface melt production relative to 2003–2012. We find that ice velocity speed-up is greater in marginal areas, and is strongly correlated with ice thickness. We hypothesise that under thinner ice, increases in basal water pressure offset a larger proportion of the ice overburden pressure, leading to reduced effective pressure and thus greater acceleration when compared to thicker ice further inland. Our findings indicate that hydro-dynamic coupling provides the major control on changes in ice motion across the ablation zone of land terminating margins of the Greenland Ice Sheet over multi-annual timescales. Text Greenland Ice Sheet PubMed Central (PMC) Greenland Scientific Reports 10 1 |
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Article Williams, Joshua J. Gourmelen, Noel Nienow, Peter Dynamic response of the Greenland ice sheet to recent cooling |
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Article |
description |
The subglacial hydrological system critically controls ice motion at the margins of the Greenland Ice Sheet. However, over multi-annual timescales, the net impact of hydro-dynamic coupling on ice motion remains poorly understood. Here, we present annual ice velocities from 1992–2019 across a ~10,600 km(2) land-terminating area of southwest Greenland. From the early-2000s through to ~2012, we observe a slowdown in ice motion in response to increased surface melt, consistent with previous research. From 2013 to 2019 however, we observe an acceleration in ice motion coincident with atmospheric cooling and a ~15% reduction in mean surface melt production relative to 2003–2012. We find that ice velocity speed-up is greater in marginal areas, and is strongly correlated with ice thickness. We hypothesise that under thinner ice, increases in basal water pressure offset a larger proportion of the ice overburden pressure, leading to reduced effective pressure and thus greater acceleration when compared to thicker ice further inland. Our findings indicate that hydro-dynamic coupling provides the major control on changes in ice motion across the ablation zone of land terminating margins of the Greenland Ice Sheet over multi-annual timescales. |
format |
Text |
author |
Williams, Joshua J. Gourmelen, Noel Nienow, Peter |
author_facet |
Williams, Joshua J. Gourmelen, Noel Nienow, Peter |
author_sort |
Williams, Joshua J. |
title |
Dynamic response of the Greenland ice sheet to recent cooling |
title_short |
Dynamic response of the Greenland ice sheet to recent cooling |
title_full |
Dynamic response of the Greenland ice sheet to recent cooling |
title_fullStr |
Dynamic response of the Greenland ice sheet to recent cooling |
title_full_unstemmed |
Dynamic response of the Greenland ice sheet to recent cooling |
title_sort |
dynamic response of the greenland ice sheet to recent cooling |
publisher |
Nature Publishing Group UK |
publishDate |
2020 |
url |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6997348/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32015394 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-58355-2 |
geographic |
Greenland |
geographic_facet |
Greenland |
genre |
Greenland Ice Sheet |
genre_facet |
Greenland Ice Sheet |
op_relation |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6997348/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32015394 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-58355-2 |
op_rights |
© The Author(s) 2020 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
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CC-BY |
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https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-58355-2 |
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Scientific Reports |
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10 |
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