Greenland's 20th Century retreat illuminated - great spatial variability with strong connections to subglacial topography and fjord bathymetry
Abstract
Mass loss acceleration from the Greenland Ice Sheet is a dominant contributor in recent global sea-level rise, and has been for several decades. While ice sheet wide mass loss has recently been documented from the end of the Little Ice Age (c. 1900 CE) to the 1980s, the detailed changes during this period remain poorly known. In this study, we map glacier margins of Greenland's 310 largest outlet glaciers in order to get the full picture of the 20th Century mass loss. We take advantage of the rich history of aerial photography over Greenland and combine photos from archives in Denmark, Norway, United Kingdom, and United States. We supplement the historical aerial photographs with declassified US spy satellite imagery and recent satellite imagery to document glacial retreat and advance on a decadal scale. With recent advances in bathymetry mapping and subglacial topography mapping, we are able to show that spatial differences in retreat throughout the last 100 years are largely controlled by the underlying topography. Our study further highlights hotspots of past rapid mass loss in Greenland, and discusses implications for periods of regional stability and advance.
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2017
- Bibcode:
- 2017AGUFM.C14A..05B
- Keywords:
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- 0720 Glaciers;
- CRYOSPHERE;
- 0728 Ice shelves;
- CRYOSPHERE;
- 4532 General circulation;
- OCEANOGRAPHY: PHYSICAL;
- 4540 Ice mechanics and air/sea/ice exchange processes;
- OCEANOGRAPHY: PHYSICAL