Studying the Svalbard-Barents-Kara Ice Sheet using GRACE observations

• Main Author: Rovira Navarro, Marc (author)
• Other Authors: van der Wal, W. (mentor), Barletta, Valentin Roberta (mentor), Sandberg Sørensen, Louise (mentor), Delft University of Technology (degree granting institution)
• Format: Master Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: 2017
• Subjects: GRACE; Glacial Isostatic Adjustment; Barents and Kara Sea; Solid Earth; Kara Sea; Svalbard; Taymyr; Ice Sheet; Sea ice; Taymyr Peninsula; Siberia
• Online Access: http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:a8f4deee-a19c-4eac-906a-c28f7bb0b390

During the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), vast ice sheets covered part of the Northern Hemisphere. In Europe, the European Ice Sheet Complex (EISC) spanned form the British Islands to the Taymyr Peninsula in Siberia. There are considerable gaps in our knowledge of the EISC, specially in the extend and deglaciation of the Svalbard-Barents-Kara Sea Ice Sheet (SBKIS). The fingerprint of the SBKIS is still visible through Glacial Isostatic Adjustment (GIA), the viscous rearranging of Earth's interior due to a changing surface load. The slow mass-flow from the borders of the paleo-ice sheet towards its center induces a secular change of the gravity field that can be observed using gravity data from the GRACE mission. We use GRACE data to obtain gravity disturbance rates and their uncertainty in the Barents and Kara Sea and compare these observations against modeled gravity rates for different combinations of ice deglaciation histories and Earth rheological parameters. Aerospace Engineering