Linear response of east Greenland's tidewater glaciers to ocean/atmosphere warming.
Predicting the retreat of tidewater outlet glaciers forms a major obstacle to forecasting the rate of mass loss from the Greenland Ice Sheet. This reflects the challenges of modeling the highly dynamic, topographically complex, and data-poor environment of the glacier-fjord systems that link the ice...
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ftunivcam:oai:www.repository.cam.ac.uk:1810/280477 2024-02-04T10:00:34+01:00 Linear response of east Greenland's tidewater glaciers to ocean/atmosphere warming. Cowton, TR Sole, AJ Nienow, PW Slater, DA Christoffersen, P 2018-07-31 Print-Electronic application/pdf https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/280477 https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.27848 eng eng Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1801769115 Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/280477 doi:10.17863/CAM.27848 Greenland climate change glaciers ice sheets sea-level rise Article 2018 ftunivcam https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.27848 2024-01-11T23:19:11Z Predicting the retreat of tidewater outlet glaciers forms a major obstacle to forecasting the rate of mass loss from the Greenland Ice Sheet. This reflects the challenges of modeling the highly dynamic, topographically complex, and data-poor environment of the glacier-fjord systems that link the ice sheet to the ocean. To avoid these difficulties, we investigate the extent to which tidewater glacier retreat can be explained by simple variables: air temperature, meltwater runoff, ocean temperature, and two simple parameterizations of "ocean/atmosphere" forcing based on the combined influence of runoff and ocean temperature. Over a 20-y period at 10 large tidewater outlet glaciers along the east coast of Greenland, we find that ocean/atmosphere forcing can explain up to 76% of the variability in terminus position at individual glaciers and 54% of variation in terminus position across all 10 glaciers. Our findings indicate that (i) the retreat of east Greenland's tidewater glaciers is best explained as a product of both oceanic and atmospheric warming and (ii) despite the complexity of tidewater glacier behavior, over multiyear timescales a significant proportion of terminus position change can be explained as a simple function of this forcing. These findings thus demonstrate that simple parameterizations can play an important role in predicting the response of the ice sheet to future climate warming. Article in Journal/Newspaper glacier Greenland Ice Sheet Tidewater Apollo - University of Cambridge Repository Greenland |
institution |
Open Polar |
collection |
Apollo - University of Cambridge Repository |
op_collection_id |
ftunivcam |
language |
English |
topic |
Greenland climate change glaciers ice sheets sea-level rise |
spellingShingle |
Greenland climate change glaciers ice sheets sea-level rise Cowton, TR Sole, AJ Nienow, PW Slater, DA Christoffersen, P Linear response of east Greenland's tidewater glaciers to ocean/atmosphere warming. |
topic_facet |
Greenland climate change glaciers ice sheets sea-level rise |
description |
Predicting the retreat of tidewater outlet glaciers forms a major obstacle to forecasting the rate of mass loss from the Greenland Ice Sheet. This reflects the challenges of modeling the highly dynamic, topographically complex, and data-poor environment of the glacier-fjord systems that link the ice sheet to the ocean. To avoid these difficulties, we investigate the extent to which tidewater glacier retreat can be explained by simple variables: air temperature, meltwater runoff, ocean temperature, and two simple parameterizations of "ocean/atmosphere" forcing based on the combined influence of runoff and ocean temperature. Over a 20-y period at 10 large tidewater outlet glaciers along the east coast of Greenland, we find that ocean/atmosphere forcing can explain up to 76% of the variability in terminus position at individual glaciers and 54% of variation in terminus position across all 10 glaciers. Our findings indicate that (i) the retreat of east Greenland's tidewater glaciers is best explained as a product of both oceanic and atmospheric warming and (ii) despite the complexity of tidewater glacier behavior, over multiyear timescales a significant proportion of terminus position change can be explained as a simple function of this forcing. These findings thus demonstrate that simple parameterizations can play an important role in predicting the response of the ice sheet to future climate warming. |
format |
Article in Journal/Newspaper |
author |
Cowton, TR Sole, AJ Nienow, PW Slater, DA Christoffersen, P |
author_facet |
Cowton, TR Sole, AJ Nienow, PW Slater, DA Christoffersen, P |
author_sort |
Cowton, TR |
title |
Linear response of east Greenland's tidewater glaciers to ocean/atmosphere warming. |
title_short |
Linear response of east Greenland's tidewater glaciers to ocean/atmosphere warming. |
title_full |
Linear response of east Greenland's tidewater glaciers to ocean/atmosphere warming. |
title_fullStr |
Linear response of east Greenland's tidewater glaciers to ocean/atmosphere warming. |
title_full_unstemmed |
Linear response of east Greenland's tidewater glaciers to ocean/atmosphere warming. |
title_sort |
linear response of east greenland's tidewater glaciers to ocean/atmosphere warming. |
publisher |
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences |
publishDate |
2018 |
url |
https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/280477 https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.27848 |
geographic |
Greenland |
geographic_facet |
Greenland |
genre |
glacier Greenland Ice Sheet Tidewater |
genre_facet |
glacier Greenland Ice Sheet Tidewater |
op_relation |
https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/280477 doi:10.17863/CAM.27848 |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.27848 |
_version_ |
1789965924534583296 |