Simulating the retreat of Upernavik glacier, Greenland, since 1900 applying the von Mises calving law
Abstract
Greenland's marine-terminating glaciers are currently retreating, accelerating and thinning. Thus, these glaciers are a major contributor to Greenland's mass loss and global sea level rise. While different calving schemes for ice sheet models exist, the causes of glacier retreat and their significance remain poorly understood.
Here, we apply a retreat scheme combining ocean induced frontal melt and the von Mises tensile stress calving law (Morlighem et al., 2016) on the three main outlet glaciers of Upernavik, West Greenland, in 1900-2017. The maximum stress threshold that determines when the glacier calves at each simulation times step is defined dependent on the depth of the glacier bed and adjusted given the simulation results of Haubner et al. (2018). We discuss the simulation performance on the three different glaciers regarding different frontal melt rates, the maximum stress threshold and the individual glacier geometry with the focus on the bathymetry below the glacier front. Haubner, K., Box, J. E., Schlegel, N. J., Larour, E. Y., Morlighem, M., Solgaard, A. M., Kjeldsen, K. K., Larsen, S. H., Rignot, E., Dupont, T. K., and Kjær, K. H.: Simulating ice thickness and velocity evolution of Upernavik Isstrøm 1849-2012 by forcing prescribed terminus positions in ISSM, The Cryosphere, 12, 1511-1522, https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-12-1511-2018, 2018. Morlighem M, Bondzio J, Seroussi H, Rignot E, Larour E, Humbert A and Rebuffi S (2016) Modeling of Store Gletscher's calving dynamics, West Greenland, in response to ocean thermal forcing. Geophysical Research Letters, 43, 2659-2666 (doi: 10.1002/2016GL067695)- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2018
- Bibcode:
- 2018AGUFM.U13B..02H
- Keywords:
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- 0810 Post-secondary education;
- EDUCATION