Heat sources within the Greenland Ice Sheet: dissipation, temperate paleo-firn and cryo-hydrologic warming

Ice temperature profiles from the Greenland Ice Sheet contain information on the deformation history, past climates and recent warming. We present full-depth temperature profiles from two drill sites on a flow line passing through Swiss Camp, West Greenland. Numerical modeling reveals that ice tempe...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Cryosphere
Main Authors: M. P. Lüthi, C. Ryser, L. C. Andrews, G. A. Catania, M. Funk, R. L. Hawley, M. J. Hoffman, T. A. Neumann
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: Copernicus Publications 2015
Subjects:
geo
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-9-245-2015
http://www.the-cryosphere.net/9/245/2015/tc-9-245-2015.pdf
https://doaj.org/article/73cd743ffd624c7d9654623e1da22bdf
Description
Summary:Ice temperature profiles from the Greenland Ice Sheet contain information on the deformation history, past climates and recent warming. We present full-depth temperature profiles from two drill sites on a flow line passing through Swiss Camp, West Greenland. Numerical modeling reveals that ice temperatures are considerably higher than would be expected from heat diffusion and dissipation alone. The possible causes for this extra heat are evaluated using a Lagrangian heat flow model. The model results reveal that the observations can be explained with a combination of different processes: enhanced dissipation (strain heating) in ice-age ice, temperate paleo-firn, and cryo-hydrologic warming in deep crevasses.