Tidewater-glacier response to supraglacial lake drainage

The flow speed of the Greenland Ice Sheet changes dramatically in inland regions when surface meltwater drains to the bed. But ice-sheet discharge to the ocean is dominated by fast-flowing outlet glaciers, where the effect of increasing surface melt on annual discharge is unknown. Observations of a...

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Published in:Nature Communications
Main Authors: Stevens, Laura A., Nettles, Meredith, Davis, James L., Creyts, Timothy T., Kingslake, Jonathan, Hewitt, Ian J., Stubblefield, Aaron
Format: Text
Language:English
Published: Nature Publishing Group UK 2022
Subjects:
Article
Greenland
glacier
Ice Sheet
Tidewater
Online Access:http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9568665/
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36241652
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-33763-2
id ftpubmed:oai:pubmedcentral.nih.gov:9568665
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spelling ftpubmed:oai:pubmedcentral.nih.gov:9568665 2023-05-15T16:21:08+02:00 Tidewater-glacier response to supraglacial lake drainage Stevens, Laura A. Nettles, Meredith Davis, James L. Creyts, Timothy T. Kingslake, Jonathan Hewitt, Ian J. Stubblefield, Aaron 2022-10-14 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9568665/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36241652 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-33763-2 en eng Nature Publishing Group UK http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9568665/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36241652 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-33763-2 © The Author(s) 2022 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/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/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . CC-BY Nat Commun Article Text 2022 ftpubmed https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-33763-2 2022-10-23T00:43:19Z The flow speed of the Greenland Ice Sheet changes dramatically in inland regions when surface meltwater drains to the bed. But ice-sheet discharge to the ocean is dominated by fast-flowing outlet glaciers, where the effect of increasing surface melt on annual discharge is unknown. Observations of a supraglacial lake drainage at Helheim Glacier, and a consequent velocity pulse propagating down-glacier, provide a natural experiment for assessing the impact of changes in injected meltwater, and allow us to interrogate the subglacial hydrological system. We find a highly efficient subglacial drainage system, such that summertime lake drainage has little net effect on ice discharge. Our results question the validity of common remote-sensing approaches for inferring subglacial conditions, knowledge of which is needed for improved projections of sea-level rise. Text glacier Greenland Ice Sheet Tidewater PubMed Central (PMC) Greenland Nature Communications 13 1
institution Open Polar
collection PubMed Central (PMC)
op_collection_id ftpubmed
language English
topic Article
spellingShingle Article
Stevens, Laura A.
Nettles, Meredith
Davis, James L.
Creyts, Timothy T.
Kingslake, Jonathan
Hewitt, Ian J.
Stubblefield, Aaron
Tidewater-glacier response to supraglacial lake drainage
topic_facet Article
description The flow speed of the Greenland Ice Sheet changes dramatically in inland regions when surface meltwater drains to the bed. But ice-sheet discharge to the ocean is dominated by fast-flowing outlet glaciers, where the effect of increasing surface melt on annual discharge is unknown. Observations of a supraglacial lake drainage at Helheim Glacier, and a consequent velocity pulse propagating down-glacier, provide a natural experiment for assessing the impact of changes in injected meltwater, and allow us to interrogate the subglacial hydrological system. We find a highly efficient subglacial drainage system, such that summertime lake drainage has little net effect on ice discharge. Our results question the validity of common remote-sensing approaches for inferring subglacial conditions, knowledge of which is needed for improved projections of sea-level rise.
format Text
author Stevens, Laura A.
Nettles, Meredith
Davis, James L.
Creyts, Timothy T.
Kingslake, Jonathan
Hewitt, Ian J.
Stubblefield, Aaron
author_facet Stevens, Laura A.
Nettles, Meredith
Davis, James L.
Creyts, Timothy T.
Kingslake, Jonathan
Hewitt, Ian J.
Stubblefield, Aaron
author_sort Stevens, Laura A.
title Tidewater-glacier response to supraglacial lake drainage
title_short Tidewater-glacier response to supraglacial lake drainage
title_full Tidewater-glacier response to supraglacial lake drainage
title_fullStr Tidewater-glacier response to supraglacial lake drainage
title_full_unstemmed Tidewater-glacier response to supraglacial lake drainage
title_sort tidewater-glacier response to supraglacial lake drainage
publisher Nature Publishing Group UK
publishDate 2022
url http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9568665/
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36241652
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-33763-2
geographic Greenland
geographic_facet Greenland
genre glacier
Greenland
Ice Sheet
Tidewater
genre_facet glacier
Greenland
Ice Sheet
Tidewater
op_source Nat Commun
op_relation http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9568665/
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36241652
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-33763-2
op_rights © The Author(s) 2022
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/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/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) .
op_rightsnorm CC-BY
op_doi https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-33763-2
container_title Nature Communications
container_volume 13
container_issue 1
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