Subglacial lake drainage detected beneath the Greenland ice sheet
Article Copyright © 2015, Rights Managed by Nature Publishing Group The contribution of the Greenland ice sheet to sea-level rise has accelerated in recent decades. Subglacial lake drainage events can induce an ice sheet dynamic response—a process that has been observed in Antarctica, but not yet in...
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ftunivexeter:oai:ore.exeter.ac.uk:10871/18452 2024-09-09T19:11:14+00:00 Subglacial lake drainage detected beneath the Greenland ice sheet Palmer, SJ McMillan, M Morlighem, M 2015 http://hdl.handle.net/10871/18452 https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms9408 en eng Nature Publishing Group SETSM DEMs (http://www.pgc.umn.edu/elevation/stereo) were accessed from the Polar Geospatial centre at the University of Minnesota, and Greenland Ice Sheet Mapping Project data (http://bprc.osu.edu/GDG/gimpdem.php) were accessed from Byrd Polar Research Center at The Ohio State University. Landsat images were provided by the US Geological Survey and were accessed using Earth Explorer (http://earthexplorer.usgs.gov/). ICESat data (http://dx.doi.org/10.5067/ICESAT/GLAS/DATA126) and MEaSUREs ice flow data (http://dx.doi.org/10.5067/MEASURES/CRYOSPHERE/nsidc-0478.001) were accessed via the National Snow and Ice Data Centre. Nature Communications 6, Article number: 8408 doi:10.1038/ncomms9408 doi:10.1038/ncomms9408 NE/M000869/1 http://hdl.handle.net/10871/18452 2041-1723 Nature Communications This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Earth sciences Geology and geophysics Article 2015 ftunivexeter https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms940810.5067/ICESAT/GLAS/DATA126 2024-07-29T03:24:15Z Article Copyright © 2015, Rights Managed by Nature Publishing Group The contribution of the Greenland ice sheet to sea-level rise has accelerated in recent decades. Subglacial lake drainage events can induce an ice sheet dynamic response—a process that has been observed in Antarctica, but not yet in Greenland, where the presence of subglacial lakes has only recently been discovered. Here we investigate the water flow paths from a subglacial lake, which drained beneath the Greenland ice sheet in 2011. Our observations suggest that the lake was fed by surface meltwater flowing down a nearby moulin, and that the draining water reached the ice margin via a subglacial tunnel. Interferometric synthetic aperture radar-derived measurements of ice surface motion acquired in 1995 suggest that a similar event may have occurred 16 years earlier, and we propose that, as the climate warms, increasing volumes of surface meltwater routed to the bed will cause such events to become more common in the future Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) Article in Journal/Newspaper Antarc* Antarctica Greenland Ice Sheet Polar Research University of Exeter: Open Research Exeter (ORE) Greenland Nature Communications 6 1 |
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Open Polar |
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University of Exeter: Open Research Exeter (ORE) |
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ftunivexeter |
language |
English |
topic |
Earth sciences Geology and geophysics |
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Earth sciences Geology and geophysics Palmer, SJ McMillan, M Morlighem, M Subglacial lake drainage detected beneath the Greenland ice sheet |
topic_facet |
Earth sciences Geology and geophysics |
description |
Article Copyright © 2015, Rights Managed by Nature Publishing Group The contribution of the Greenland ice sheet to sea-level rise has accelerated in recent decades. Subglacial lake drainage events can induce an ice sheet dynamic response—a process that has been observed in Antarctica, but not yet in Greenland, where the presence of subglacial lakes has only recently been discovered. Here we investigate the water flow paths from a subglacial lake, which drained beneath the Greenland ice sheet in 2011. Our observations suggest that the lake was fed by surface meltwater flowing down a nearby moulin, and that the draining water reached the ice margin via a subglacial tunnel. Interferometric synthetic aperture radar-derived measurements of ice surface motion acquired in 1995 suggest that a similar event may have occurred 16 years earlier, and we propose that, as the climate warms, increasing volumes of surface meltwater routed to the bed will cause such events to become more common in the future Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) |
format |
Article in Journal/Newspaper |
author |
Palmer, SJ McMillan, M Morlighem, M |
author_facet |
Palmer, SJ McMillan, M Morlighem, M |
author_sort |
Palmer, SJ |
title |
Subglacial lake drainage detected beneath the Greenland ice sheet |
title_short |
Subglacial lake drainage detected beneath the Greenland ice sheet |
title_full |
Subglacial lake drainage detected beneath the Greenland ice sheet |
title_fullStr |
Subglacial lake drainage detected beneath the Greenland ice sheet |
title_full_unstemmed |
Subglacial lake drainage detected beneath the Greenland ice sheet |
title_sort |
subglacial lake drainage detected beneath the greenland ice sheet |
publisher |
Nature Publishing Group |
publishDate |
2015 |
url |
http://hdl.handle.net/10871/18452 https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms9408 |
geographic |
Greenland |
geographic_facet |
Greenland |
genre |
Antarc* Antarctica Greenland Ice Sheet Polar Research |
genre_facet |
Antarc* Antarctica Greenland Ice Sheet Polar Research |
op_relation |
SETSM DEMs (http://www.pgc.umn.edu/elevation/stereo) were accessed from the Polar Geospatial centre at the University of Minnesota, and Greenland Ice Sheet Mapping Project data (http://bprc.osu.edu/GDG/gimpdem.php) were accessed from Byrd Polar Research Center at The Ohio State University. Landsat images were provided by the US Geological Survey and were accessed using Earth Explorer (http://earthexplorer.usgs.gov/). ICESat data (http://dx.doi.org/10.5067/ICESAT/GLAS/DATA126) and MEaSUREs ice flow data (http://dx.doi.org/10.5067/MEASURES/CRYOSPHERE/nsidc-0478.001) were accessed via the National Snow and Ice Data Centre. Nature Communications 6, Article number: 8408 doi:10.1038/ncomms9408 doi:10.1038/ncomms9408 NE/M000869/1 http://hdl.handle.net/10871/18452 2041-1723 Nature Communications |
op_rights |
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms940810.5067/ICESAT/GLAS/DATA126 |
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Nature Communications |
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