Widespread moulin formation during supraglacial lake drainages in Greenland

• Main Authors: Hoffman, Matthew J, Perego, Mauro, Andrews, Lauren C, Price, Stephen F, Neumann, Thomas A, Johnson, Jesse V, Catania, Ginny, Lüthi, Martin P
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: American Geophysical Union 2018
• Subjects: Institute of Geography; 910 Geography & travel; General Earth and Planetary Sciences; Geophysics; Greenland; glacier; Ice Sheet
• Online Access: https://www.zora.uzh.ch/id/eprint/162834/; https://www.zora.uzh.ch/id/eprint/162834/1/2018_Hoffman%26al2018.pdf; https://doi.org/10.1002/2017gl075659

Moulins permit access of surface meltwater to the glacier bed, causing basal lubrication and ice speedup in the ablation zone of western Greenland during summer. Despite the substantial impact of moulins on ice dynamics, the conditions under which they form are poorly understood. We assimilate a time series of ice surface velocity from a network of eleven Global Positioning System receivers into an ice sheet model to estimate ice sheet stresses during winter, spring, and summer in a ∼30 × 10 km region. Surface-parallel von Mises stress increases slightly during spring speedup and early summer, sufficient to allow formation of 16% of moulins mapped in the study area. In contrast, 63% of mourns experience stresses over the tensile strength of ice during a short (hours) supraglacial lake drainage event. Lake drainages appear to control moulin density, which is itself a control on subglacial drainage efficiency and summer ice velocities.