Rapid thinning and collapse of lake calving Yakutat Glacier, Southeast Alaska

• Main Author: Trüssel, Barbara Lea
• Other Authors: Motyka, Roman, Hock, Regine, Larsen, Christopher, Truffer, Martin
• Format: Doctoral or Postdoctoral Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: 2013
• Subjects: Fairbanks; glacier; glaciers; Tidewater; Yakutat; Alaska
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/11122/4458

Dissertation (Ph.D.) University of Alaska Fairbanks, 2013 Glaciers around the globe are experiencing a notable retreat and thinning, triggered by atmospheric warming. Tidewater glaciers in particular have received much attention, because they have been recognized to contribute substantially to global sea level rise. How-ever, lake calving glaciers in Alaska show increasingly high thinning and retreat rates and are therefore contributors to sea level rise. The number of such lake calving systems is increasing worldwide as land-terminating glaciers retreat into overdeepened basins and form proglacial lakes. Yakutat Glacier in Southeast Alaska is a low elevation lake calving glacier with an accumulation to total area ratio of 0.03. It experienced rapid thinning of 4.43 ± 0.06 m w.e. yr⁻¹ between 2000-2010 and terminus retreat of over 15 km since the beginning of the 20th century. Simultaneously, adjacent Yakutat Icefield land-terminating glaciers thinned at lower but still substantial rates (3.54 ± 0.06 m w.e. yr⁻¹ for the same time period), indicating lake calving dynamics help drive increased mass loss. Yakutat Glacier sustained a ~3 km long floating tongue for over a decade, which started to disintegrate into large tabular icebergs in 2010. Such floating tongues are rarely seen on temperate tidewater glaciers. The floating ice was weakened by surface ablation, which then allowed rifts to form and intersect. Ice velocity from GPS measurements showed that the ice on the floating tongue was moving substantially faster than grounded ice, which was attributed to rift opening between the floating and grounded ice. Temporal variations of rift opening were determined from time-lapse imagery, and correlated well with variations in ice speeds. Larger rift opening rates occurred during and after precipitation or increased melt episodes. Both of these events increased subglacial discharge and could potentially increase the subaqueous currents towards the open lake and thus increase drag on the ice underside. ...