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Controls on Terminus Change of Marine Terminating Glaciers in Greenland Over the Last 40+ Years

Controls on Terminus Change of Marine Terminating Glaciers in Greenland Over the Last 40+ Years PDF Author: Sophie Ann Goliber
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
Since the 1980s, the Greenland ice sheet has been losing ice mass at an increased rate. Our current understanding of the complex physical processes that control dynamic mass loss is incomplete and, therefore, leads to a wide range of possible future contributions to sea level. Ice dynamics, or changes due to changes in ice flux, is dominated by the behavior of fast-moving outlet glaciers in Greenland. These glaciers are changing through melting of the terminus face and/or calving of icebergs; the combination of these processes and ice motion determines the position of a glacier terminus. In understanding how and why outlet glacier termini change over time compared to external forcing and internal glacier dynamics, we are able to move toward a better understanding of marine-terminating glaciers. In this dissertation, I use terminus traces to observe how and why marine-terminating glaciers change in order to better understand the mechanisms behind these complex heterogeneous changes in Greenland. I develop the largest database of manually-traced marine-terminating glacier terminus data for use in scientific and machine learning applications. These data have been collected, cleaned, assigned with appropriate metadata, including image scenes, and compiled so that they can be easily accessed by scientists. Then I use the location of the termini to identify features in the bed topography that inhibit the retreat of glaciers following the onset of ocean warming and widespread glacier retreat in the late 1990s. I find that the slope and lateral dimensions of bed features exhibit the strongest correlation to retreat and that the shape of the bed features allows different styles of terminus retreat, which may be indicative of how different ablation mechanisms are distributed across termini. Finally, I produce a time series of terminus morphological properties for four glaciers in western Greenland to identify the characteristics that are indicative of calving processes with the goal of categorizing glaciers by calving style. I find that a concave shape and low sinuosity are present at glaciers that calve via buoyant flexure, while the opposite is true at glaciers that are dominated by melt-induced calving via serac failure. I also find that glaciers do not persistently fit into single calving styles and may change over time. By studying how the terminus changes over time compared to external forcing and internal glacier dynamics, we are able to move toward a better understanding of marine-terminating glaciers

Controls on Terminus Change of Marine Terminating Glaciers in Greenland Over the Last 40+ Years

Controls on Terminus Change of Marine Terminating Glaciers in Greenland Over the Last 40+ Years PDF Author: Sophie Ann Goliber
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
Since the 1980s, the Greenland ice sheet has been losing ice mass at an increased rate. Our current understanding of the complex physical processes that control dynamic mass loss is incomplete and, therefore, leads to a wide range of possible future contributions to sea level. Ice dynamics, or changes due to changes in ice flux, is dominated by the behavior of fast-moving outlet glaciers in Greenland. These glaciers are changing through melting of the terminus face and/or calving of icebergs; the combination of these processes and ice motion determines the position of a glacier terminus. In understanding how and why outlet glacier termini change over time compared to external forcing and internal glacier dynamics, we are able to move toward a better understanding of marine-terminating glaciers. In this dissertation, I use terminus traces to observe how and why marine-terminating glaciers change in order to better understand the mechanisms behind these complex heterogeneous changes in Greenland. I develop the largest database of manually-traced marine-terminating glacier terminus data for use in scientific and machine learning applications. These data have been collected, cleaned, assigned with appropriate metadata, including image scenes, and compiled so that they can be easily accessed by scientists. Then I use the location of the termini to identify features in the bed topography that inhibit the retreat of glaciers following the onset of ocean warming and widespread glacier retreat in the late 1990s. I find that the slope and lateral dimensions of bed features exhibit the strongest correlation to retreat and that the shape of the bed features allows different styles of terminus retreat, which may be indicative of how different ablation mechanisms are distributed across termini. Finally, I produce a time series of terminus morphological properties for four glaciers in western Greenland to identify the characteristics that are indicative of calving processes with the goal of categorizing glaciers by calving style. I find that a concave shape and low sinuosity are present at glaciers that calve via buoyant flexure, while the opposite is true at glaciers that are dominated by melt-induced calving via serac failure. I also find that glaciers do not persistently fit into single calving styles and may change over time. By studying how the terminus changes over time compared to external forcing and internal glacier dynamics, we are able to move toward a better understanding of marine-terminating glaciers

Automated Terminus Detection for Greenland's Peripheral Marine-terminating Glaciers

Automated Terminus Detection for Greenland's Peripheral Marine-terminating Glaciers PDF Author: Julia Liu
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Glaciers
Languages : en
Pages : 45

Book Description
"Changes in the length of marine-terminating glaciers strongly influence the mass balance of glaciers, ice caps, and ice sheets. Currently, quantification of glacier length change through measurement of terminus position relies on time-consuming and subjective manual mapping techniques, limiting our ability to understand the dynamics controlling glacier terminus changes. I developed an automated method of mapping glacier terminus positions in satellite imagery using observations from a representative sample of Greenlands peripheral glaciers. The method is adapted from the 2D Wavelet Transform Modulus Maxima (WTMM) segmentation method, which has been used previously for image segmentation in biomedical and other applied science fields. The gradient-based method places edge detection lines along regions with the greatest gradient in intensity in the image, such as the contrast between glacier ice and water or glacier ice and sea ice. I quantified the accuracy of the automated method with reference to a validation dataset consisting of over 500 manual delineations and determined that the automated method is capable of mapping glacier termini over a wide range of image conditions (light to intermediate cloud cover, uniformly dim or bright lighting, etc.) within 1-pixel uncertainty. These time series generated automatically from Landsat images (which have a frequent repeat interval and a long record of images) are capable of resolving sub-seasonal to multiannual temporal patterns as well as regional patterns in terminus change for these glaciers. The terminus position time series generated from this automated method indicate that the marine-terminating peripheral glaciers in southeast Greenland undergo synchronous terminus retreat in 2016-17. Initial exploration of regional atmospheric and ocean conditions links this synchronous retreat to subsurface ocean warming and increased surface runoff."--Boise State University ScholarWorks.

Terminus Changes of Tidewater Outlet Glaciers in Greenland

Terminus Changes of Tidewater Outlet Glaciers in Greenland PDF Author: Kristin Meredith Schild
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Earthquakes
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description


Geometric Controls on the Inland Extent of Dynamic Thinning for Greenland Ice Sheet Outlet Glaciers

Geometric Controls on the Inland Extent of Dynamic Thinning for Greenland Ice Sheet Outlet Glaciers PDF Author: Denis Felikson
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 292

Book Description
The Greenland Ice Sheet has been losing mass at an accelerating rate since 2003, in part due to changes in ice sheet dynamics. As ocean-terminating outlet glaciers retreat, they initiate thinning that diffuses inland, causing dynamic mass loss from the ice sheet interior. Although outlet glaciers have undergone widespread retreat during the last two decades, the inland extent of thinning and, thus, the mass loss is heterogeneous between glacier catchments. There remains a lack of a unifying explanation of the cause of this heterogeneity and accurately projecting the sea-level rise contribution from the ice sheet requires improvement in our understanding of what controls the upstream diffusion of thinning, initiated by terminus retreat. In this dissertation, I use observations and modeling to identify limits to the upstream diffusion of dynamic thinning for ocean-terminating glaciers draining the Greenland Ice Sheet. I start by using diffusive-kinematic wave theory to describe the evolution of thinning and I calibrate a metric that identifies how far upstream a thinning perturbation can diffuse from glacier termini. This metric is calculable from the observed glacier bed and surface topography and I use it to predict inland thinning limits for the majority of Greenland's outlet glaciers. I find that inland thinning limits often coincide with subglacial knickpoints in bed topography. These are steep reaches of the bed that are located at the transition between the portion of the bed that is below sea level and the upstream portion that is above sea level. I use the predicted thinning limits to help identify individual glaciers that have the largest potential to contribute to sea-level rise in the coming century. Finally, I use higher-order numerical modeling to validate the predicted thinning limits from the first-order kinematic wave model, and to investigate the timing and magnitude of glacier mass loss over the coming century. I find that glaciers that have small ice fluxes but are susceptible to thin far into the interior of the ice sheet have the potential to contribute as much to sea-level rise as their higher-flux counterparts. These lower-flux glaciers are often not discussed in literature but will be significant contributors to sea-level rise by 2100.

Dynamic Changes at Tidewater Glacier Termini in Central West Greenland

Dynamic Changes at Tidewater Glacier Termini in Central West Greenland PDF Author: Mason Joseph Fried
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 270

Book Description
The Greenland Ice Sheet rapidly lost mass over the last two decades, in part due to increases in ice loss from termini of large tidewater glaciers. Terminus melting and calving can drive glacier retreat and the pattern of ice sheet mass loss through reductions in resistive stresses near the glacier front and, in turn, increases in ice flow to the ocean. Despite their importance to ice sheet mass balance, factors controlling terminus positions are poorly constrained in ice sheet models, which fundamentally obscures sea level rise predictions. In this dissertation, I use a suite of novel observations and techniques to quantify controls on frontal ablation and terminus positions at tidewater glaciers in central west Greenland. Until recently, frontal ablation processes were obscured due to limited observations of submarine termini. Here, I use observations from multibeam echo sonar to show the morphological complexity of the submarine terminus face and identify previously unrecognized melting and calving processes. The terminus features numerous secondary subglacial plume outlets outside of the main subglacial channel system that drive and disperse large submarine melt rates across the glacier front. Submarine melting drives steep, localized terminus undercutting that can trigger calving by connecting to finely-spaced surface crevasses. In turn, large calving events cause the terminus face to become anomalously overcut. Incorporating observed outlet geometries in a numerical plume model, I estimate small subglacial discharge fluxes feeding secondary plume outlets that are reminiscent of a distributed subglacial network. Regional remote-sensing observations reveal that, for most glaciers in central west Greenland, seasonal terminus positions are more sensitive to glacial runoff than ice mélange or ocean thermal forcing. Shallow, serac-failing tidewater glaciers are most sensitive, where subglacial plumes melt the terminus and locally enhance retreat. Glaciers with large ice fluxes and deep termini retreat sporadically through full ice-thickness calving events less dependent on runoff. Together, these results provide process-oriented constraints on the shape of the submarine terminus face, the geometry of subglacial discharge and submarine melting, the influence of environmental forcing mechanisms and the impact that these variables have on terminus positions and dynamics in a warming climate.

Greenland Outlet Glacier Behavior During the 21st Century

Greenland Outlet Glacier Behavior During the 21st Century PDF Author: Twila Moon
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Ice sheets
Languages : en
Pages : 116

Book Description
Outlet glacier ice dynamics, including ice-flow speed, play a key role in determining Greenland Ice Sheet mass loss, which is a significant contributor to global sea-level rise. Mass loss from the Greenland Ice Sheet increased significantly over the last several decades and current mass losses of 260-380 Gt ice/yr contribute 0.7-1.1 mm/yr to global sea-level rise (~10%). Understanding the potentially complex interactions among glacier, ocean, and climate, however, remains a challenge and limits certainty in modeling and predicting future ice sheet behavior and associated risks to society. This thesis focuses on understanding the seasonal to interannual scale changes in outlet glacier velocity across the Greenland Ice Sheet and how velocity fluctuations are connected to other elements of the ice sheet-ocean-atmosphere system. 1) Interannual velocity patterns Earlier observations on several of Greenland's outlet glaciers, starting near the turn of the 21st century, indicated rapid (annual-scale) and large (>100%) increases in glacier velocity. Combining data from several satellites, we produce a decade-long (2000 to 2010) record documenting the ongoing velocity evolution of nearly all (200+) of Greenland's major outlet glaciers, revealing complex spatial and temporal patterns. Changes on fast-flow marine-terminating glaciers contrast with steady velocities on ice-shelf-terminating glaciers and slow speeds on land-terminating glaciers. Regionally, glaciers in the northwest accelerated steadily, with more variability in the southeast and relatively steady flow elsewhere. Intraregional variability shows a complex response to regional and local forcing. Observed acceleration indicates that sea level rise from Greenland may fall well below earlier proposed upper bounds. 2) Seasonal velocity patterns. Greenland mass loss includes runoff of surface melt and ice discharge via marine-terminating outlet glaciers, the latter now making up a third to a half of total ice loss. The magnitude of ice discharge depends in part on ice-flow speed, which has broadly increased since 2000 but varies locally, regionally, and from year-to-year. Research on a few Greenland glaciers also shows that speed varies seasonally. However, for many regions of the ice sheet, including wide swaths of the west, northwest, and southeast coasts where ice loss is increasing most rapidly, there are few or no records of seasonal velocity variation. We present 5-year records of seasonal velocity measurements for 55 glaciers distributed around the ice sheet margin. We find 3 distinct seasonal velocity patterns. The different patterns indicate varying glacier sensitivity to ice-front (terminus) position and likely regional differences in basal hydrology in which some subglacial systems do transition seasonally from inefficient, distributed hydrologic networks to efficient, channelized drainage, while others do not. Our findings highlight the need for modeling and observation of diverse glacier systems in order to understand the full spectrum of ice-sheet dynamics. 3) Seasonal to interannual glacier and sea ice behavior and interaction Focusing on 16 northwestern Greenland glaciers during 2009-2012, we examine terminus position, sea ice and ice m??lange conditions, seasonal velocity changes, topography, and climate, with extended 1999-2012 records for 4 glaciers. There is a strong correlation between near-terminus sea ice/mélange conditions and terminus position. In several cases, late-forming and inconsistent sea ice/mélange may induce sustained retreat. For all of the 13-year records and most of the 4-year records, sustained, multi-year retreat is accompanied by velocity increase. Seasonal speedup, which is observed across the region, may, however, be more heavily influenced by melt interacting with the subglacial hydrologic system than seasonal terminus variation. Projections of continued warming and longer ice-free periods around Greenland suggest that notable retreat over wide areas may continue. Sustained retreat is likely to be associated with multi-year speedup, though both processes are modulated by local topography. The timing of seasonal ice dynamics patterns may also shift.

Investigations of Glacier Terminus Changes on Weekly to Decadal Time Scales

Investigations of Glacier Terminus Changes on Weekly to Decadal Time Scales PDF Author: Taryn Elizabeth Black
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
Glacier retreat and mass loss are contributing to global sea-level rise and environmental change. One method to improve our understanding of how glaciers affect local and global environments is to measure historical and ongoing glacier retreat. In this dissertation, I use satellite images to measure glacier terminus change in Greenland and Alaska. In both regions, I quantify glacier retreat and advance on time scales ranging from seasons to decades.In northwest and central-west Greenland, I investigate multi-decadal outlet glacier retreat and its potential driving mechanisms from 1972 through 2021. Over this time period, glaciers in this region of Greenland represented nearly half of Greenland's total contribution to sea-level rise. I show that regional glacier retreat accelerated from 1996, and that this retreat is most sensitive to runoff and ocean temperatures. Because runoff and ocean temperatures can influence terminus positions through several mechanisms, it is likely that multiple mechanisms are contributing to the observed retreat in this region. I also examine multi-decadal glacier retreat, as well as seasonal terminus variations, for maritime glaciers in Kenai Fjords National Park, Alaska, from 1984 through 2021. I show that most glaciers retreated substantially, and those that did not were predominantly tidewater. Seasonally, tidewater, lake-terminating, and land-terminating glaciers all tended to retreat during the summer; in the winter, tidewater glaciers tended to advance, while lake-terminating glaciers continued to retreat, and land-terminating glaciers were more variable. Glacier change in Kenai Fjords National Park is driving changes in landcover and viewscapes, which affects local ecosystems and ecotourism. Finally, I characterize seasonal terminus variations around the full margin of Greenland at monthly and six-day temporal resolution. I show that nearly 75% of outlet glaciers exhibit terminus position seasonality, with seasonal retreat typically beginning in mid-May and continuing through early October. The onset and duration of the retreat period appears to be related to the timing of the onset of melt, while the magnitude of terminus position seasonality correlates with glacier velocity. Glacier dynamics are influenced by conditions at the terminus, and terminus position seasonality can affect projections of future ice-sheet mass balance.

Changes in the Marine-terminating Glaciers of Central East Greenland, 2000-2010, and Potential Connections to Ocean Circulation

Changes in the Marine-terminating Glaciers of Central East Greenland, 2000-2010, and Potential Connections to Ocean Circulation PDF Author: Kaitlin M. Walsh
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

Book Description
Abstract: Outlet glaciers and ice caps on the periphery of the Greenland Ice Sheet have been observed to be extremely sensitive to climate. The limited studies conducted on the marine-terminating glaciers of eastern Greenland's Geikie Plateau and Blosseville Coast suggest exceptionally rapid rates of mass loss and short-term variability in ice dynamics. This study is targeted at a region of central east Greenland for which GRACE mass-anomaly observations show substantial recent mass-loss since its launch in March 2002. Additionally, glaciers in this region terminate into Denmark Straight, which is a thermodynamic transition zone between the Arctic and North Atlantic oceans. Extensive glacial change has been more pronounced through the Denmark Straight and south of the straight, which supports the hypothesis that ocean dynamics, specifically the Irminger Current and East Greenland Current, are supporting increased melt at the ice-ocean interface. It is possible that an appreciable amount of melt and ice loss south of Kangerdlugssuaq is occurring as a result of warmer subpolar water flowing into glacial fjords. We present changes to 38 marine-terminating glaciers as observed using Landsat-7 ETM+ imagery to develop a time series of changing front positions and flow speeds of these glaciers from 2000 to 2010. ASTER DEMs were used to quantify elevation change and thinning. Additionally, we examine sea surface temperatures at five sites along the east Greenland coast to identify possible correlations between warming of the sea surface and increased melt at the glacier termini.

Bayesian Time Series Models

Bayesian Time Series Models PDF Author: David Barber
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521196760
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 432

Book Description
The first unified treatment of time series modelling techniques spanning machine learning, statistics, engineering and computer science.

Interacting Climates of Ocean Basins

Interacting Climates of Ocean Basins PDF Author: Carlos R. Mechoso
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108492703
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 359

Book Description
A comprehensive review of interactions between the climates of different ocean basins and their key contributions to global climate variability and change. Providing essential theory and discussing outstanding examples as well as impacts on monsoons, it a useful resource for graduate students and researchers in the atmospheric and ocean sciences.