Influence of climate change on the postglacial evolution of Patagonian glaciers and response of the solid earth

• Main Author: Troch, Matthias
• Other Authors: Bertrand, Sebastien, De Batist, Marc
• Format: Doctoral or Postdoctoral Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: Ghent University. Faculty of Sciences 2023
• Subjects: Earth and Environmental Sciences; Antarctic; Patagonia; Greenland; Antarc*; glacier
• Online Access: https://biblio.ugent.be/publication/01HF9AEJRED9W6VFW82ED9HQP5; http://hdl.handle.net/1854/LU-01HF9AEJRED9W6VFW82ED9HQP5; https://biblio.ugent.be/publication/01HF9AEJRED9W6VFW82ED9HQP5/file/01HF9B3WZX9C2NS1QD6KAS9ZCC

Over the last decades, global warming has caused widespread shrinking of the cryosphere, with two thirds of glaciers worldwide (excluding the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets) projected to disappear by 2100 CE. Large uncertainties however remain in maritime settings, where some glaciers have recently gained mass in response to increased snowfall or lowered air temperatures related to changes in atmospheric circulation. In addition, worldwide ice-mass loss has caused sea level to rise on a global scale. On a local scale, however, sea level has fallen in glacierized regions due to Glacial Isostatic Adjustment (GIA) of the underlying solid earth related to decreasing ice loads. On these two aspects, Patagonia stands out. Increased precipitation along the western side of the Andean ice divide since the 1980s, for instance, has partly attenuated ice mass loss in response to atmospheric warming. In addition, this region is home to the largest glacial isostatic rebound rate ever recorded, with recent GPS measurements revealing crustal uplift rates exceeding 4 cm/year. Detailed analyses of past glacier-climate and glacier-isostasy interactions in Patagonia are needed to better assess how future climate change will affect both the local cryo- and lithosphere. Given the location of the Patagonian icefields at the warm end of the continuum of climatic and oceanographic settings at which glaciers reach sea level, conducting research on Patagonian outlet glaciers might also provide us with a crucial window into the future of similar glacierized regions across the world. With this in mind, the goal of this thesis is to better comprehend how Patagonian outlet glaciers along the maritime side of the southern Andes responded to climate change over the past millennia, and to quantify the magnitude and rate of the associated isostatic response. More specifically, we aim to address two research questions: (1) “What is the relative importance of temperature and precipitation on glacier variability along the humid side of the ...