Höjdförändringar på Lomonosovfonna, Svalbard, 1996-2012

• Main Author: Borg, Linnea
• Format: Bachelor Thesis
• Language: Swedish
• Published: Uppsala universitet, Institutionen för geovetenskaper 2013
• Subjects: Earth and Related Environmental Sciences; Geovetenskap och miljövetenskap; Physical Geography; Naturgeografi; Arctic; Billefjorden; Lomonosovfonna; Svalbard; albedo; Arktis; Arktis*; glacier; Global warming
• Online Access: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-206198

The climate changes and the global warming have a great impact on the Arctic environments. This partially depends on that the albedo is getting lower when snow and ice is melting and exposes more and more dark surfaces of the land and sea. This leads to a feedback effect; the melting accelerates because dark surfaces attract more sun radiation. Because of the heating the glaciers in Arctic retreat. The purpose of this report is to obtain an eventual change in elevation on the glacier Lomonosovfonna that is located on Svalbard by comparing elevation data collected by NASA and GPS data from 1996-2012. The data was processed in ArcGIS and Matlab and the result is a change in elevation during the periods 1996-2012, 1996-2002 and 2002-2012. The result shows an average height decrease of Lomonosovfonna of -0,44 meters per year. When the result is reviewed, one can notice that both an increase and a decrease in height are observed on Lomonosovfonna. On the edge of the glacier, that border to Billefjorden, only a decrease in elevation is noticed. Some differences in elevation is very high in this area, and this can be due to three causes; the highest amount of melting occurs on the edges because of the higher air temperature at low elevation cause high melt, a calving have occurred or the difference is due to that the glacier is steepest in this area and therefore small position errors between measurements can cause big differences. The result also shows that the melting is accelerating, since the average melting of Lomonosovfonna was -0,26 meters per year during the period 1996-2002 and during the period 2002-2012 the melting had increased to -0,54 meters per year. The results are all in line with earlier measurements and reports and also with predictions for the climate. Klimatförändringarna och den globala uppvärmningen slår hårt mot Arktis och områdena där omkring. Detta beror till stor del av att när snö och is smälter så försvinner ljusa ytor och ersätts av mörkt hav och land – albedot sänks. Detta har en ...