a processing system to monitor greenland outlet glacier velocity variations at decadal and seasonal time scales utilizing the landsat imagery abstract in this paper we present a monitoring system for area wide flow velocity fields of the outlet glaciers of the greenland ice sheet gris utilizing the freely available landsat archive in order to process this large amount of satellite images an almost automatic monitoring system was developed with the global digital elevation map v2 gdem v2 of the advanced spaceborne thermal emission and reflection radiometer aster an improved orthorectification was applied which in combination with a destriping correction of the landsat 7 products with scan line corrector slc failure leads to more precise flow velocity information in addition outliers were removed using an adaptive recursive filter approach for the time span 1972 2012 more than 100 000 flow velocity fields were derived from over 16 000 optical multi sensoral landsat scenes landsat 1 to landsat 7 allowing the determination of the long term flow velocity trend moreover the high temporal resolution facilitates the analysis of seasonal flow velocity variations of numerous outlet glaciers for many of the major outlet glaciers the results show an acceleration pattern that is consistent with most of the previously published analyses however the flow velocity changes do not have a uniform pattern in their temporal and spatial distribution this study provides both a high temporal densification and an extension of existing flow velocity information of the gris margin finally this processing chain in its generality allows for the determination of various types of surface displacements and can be applied to other glacier regions

greenland flow variability from ice sheet wide velocity mapping using radarsat synthetic aperture radar data we have mapped the flow velocity over much of the greenland ice sheet for the winters of 2000 01 and 2005 06 these maps provide a detailed view of the ice sheet flow including that of the hundreds of glaciers draining the interior the focused patterns of flow at the coast suggest a strong influence of bedrock topography differences between our two maps confirm numerous early observations of accelerated outlet glacier flow as well as revealing previously unrecognized changes the overall pattern is one of speed up accompanied by terminus retreat but there are also several instances of surge behavior and a few cases of glacier slowdown comprehensive mappings such as these at regular intervals provide an important new observational capability for understanding ice sheet variability

linear response of east greenland s tidewater glaciers to ocean atmosphere warming predicting the retreat of tidewater outlet glaciers forms a major obstacle to forecasting the rate of mass loss from the greenland ice sheet this reflects the challenges of modeling the highly dynamic topographically complex and data poor environment of the glacier fjord systems that link the ice sheet to the ocean to avoid these difficulties we investigate the extent to which tidewater glacier retreat can be explained by simple variables air temperature meltwater runoff ocean temperature and two simple parameterizations of ocean atmosphere forcing based on the combined influence of runoff and ocean temperature over a 20 y period at 10 large tidewater outlet glaciers along the east coast of greenland we find that ocean atmosphere forcing can explain up to 76 of the variability in terminus position at individual glaciers and 54 of variation in terminus position across all 10 glaciers our findings indicate that i the retreat of east greenland s tidewater glaciers is best explained as a product of both oceanic and atmospheric warming and ii despite the complexity of tidewater glacier behavior over multiyear timescales a significant proportion of terminus position change can be explained as a simple function of this forcing these findings thus demonstrate that simple parameterizations can play an important role in predicting the response of the ice sheet to future climate warming

kinematic constraints on glacier contributions to 21st century sea level rise on the basis of climate modeling and analogies with past conditions the potential for multimeter increases in sea level by the end of the 21st century has been proposed we consider glaciological conditions required for large sea level rise to occur by 2100 and conclude that increases in excess of 2 meters are physically untenable we find that a total sea level rise of about 2 meters by 2100 could occur under physically possible glaciological conditions but only if all variables are quickly accelerated to extremely high limits more plausible but still accelerated conditions lead to total sea level rise by 2100 of about 0 8 meter these roughly constrained scenarios provide a most likely starting point for refinements in sea level forecasts that include ice flow dynamics

characteristics of ocean waters reaching greenland s glaciers interaction of greenland s marine terminating glaciers with the ocean has emerged as a key term in the ice sheet mass balance and a plausible trigger for their recent acceleration our knowledge of the dynamics however is limited by scarcity of ocean measurements at the glacier ocean boundary here data collected near six marine terminating glaciers 79 north kangerdlugssuaq helheim and petermann glaciers jakobshavn isbrae and the combined sermeq kujatdleq and akangnardleq are compared to investigate the water masses and the circulation at the ice ocean boundary polar water of arctic origin and atlantic water from the subtropical north atlantic are found near all the glaciers property analysis indicates melting by atlantic water aw found at the grounding line depth near all the glaciers and the influence of subglacial discharge at depth in summer aw temperatures near the glaciers range from 4 58c in the southeast to 0 168c in northwest greenland consistent with the distance from the subtropical north atlantic and cooling across the continental shelf a review of its offshore variability suggests that aw temperature changes in the fjords will be largest in southern and smallest in northwest greenland consistent with the regional distribution of the recent glacier acceleration

21st century evolution of greenland outlet glacier velocities 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 proposed upper bounds

acceleration of the contribution of the greenland and antarctic ice sheets to sea level rise 1 ice sheet mass balance estimates have improved substantially in recent years using a variety of techniques over different time periods and at various levels of spatial detail considerable disparity remains between these estimates due to the inherent uncertainties of each method the lack of detailed comparison between independent estimates and the effect of temporal modulations in ice sheet surface mass balance here we present a consistent record of mass balance for the greenland and antarctic ice sheets over the past two decades validated by the comparison of two independent techniques over the last 8 years one differencing perimeter loss from net accumulation and one using a dense time series of time variable gravity we find excellent agreement between the two techniques for absolute mass loss and acceleration of mass loss in 2006 the greenland and antarctic ice sheets experienced a combined mass loss of 475 158 gt yr equivalent to 1 3 0 4 mm yr sea level rise notably the acceleration in ice sheet loss over the last 18 years was 21 9 1 gt yr2 for greenland and 14 5 2 gt yr2 for antarctica for a combined total of 36 3 2 gt yr2 this acceleration is 3 times larger than for mountain glaciers and ice caps 12 6 gt yr2 if this trend continues ice sheets will be the dominant contributor to sea level rise in the 21st century

quantifying energy and mass fluxes controlling godthabsfjord freshwater input in a 5 km simulation 1991 2012 abstractfreshwater runoff to fjords with marine terminating glaciers along the greenland ice sheet margin has an impact on fjord circulation and potentially ice sheet mass balance through increasing heat transport to the glacier front here the authors use the high resolution 5 5 km hirham5 regional climate model allowing high detail in topography and surface types to estimate freshwater input to godthabsfjord in southwest greenland model output is compared to hydrometeorological observations and while simulated daily variability in temperature and downwelling radiation shows high correlation with observations typically 0 9 there are biases that impact the results in particular overestimated albedo leads to underestimation of melt and runoff at low elevations in the model simulation 1991 2012 the ice sheet experiences increasing energy input from the surface turbulent heat flux up to elevations of 2000 m and shortwave radiation at all elevations southerly wind anomalies and declining

ice melange dynamics and implications for terminus stability jakobshavn isbrae greenland 1 we used time lapse imagery seismic and audio recordings iceberg and glacier velocities ocean wave measurements and simple theoretical considerations to investigate the interactions between jakobshavn isbrae and its proglacial ice melange the melange behaves as a weak granular ice shelf whose rheology varies seasonally sea ice growth in winter stiffens the melange matrix by binding iceberg clasts together ultimately preventing the calving of full glacier thickness icebergs the dominant style of calving and enabling a several kilometer terminus advance each summer the melange weakens and the terminus retreats the melange remains strong enough however to be largely unaffected by ocean currents except during calving events and to influence the timing and sequence of calving events furthermore motion of the melange is highly episodic between calving events including the entire winter it is pushed down fjord by the advancing terminus at 40 m d 1 whereas during calving events it can move in excess of 50 103 m d 1 for more than 10 min by influencing the timing of calving events the melange contributes to the glacier s several kilometer seasonal advance and retreat the associated geometric changes of the terminus area affect glacier flow furthermore a force balance analysis shows that large scale calving is only possible from a terminus that is near floatation especially in the presence of a resistive ice melange the net annual retreat of the glacier is therefore limited by its proximity to floatation potentially providing a physical mechanism for a previously described near floatation criterion for calving

a reconciled estimate of ice sheet mass balance we combined an ensemble of satellite altimetry interferometry and gravimetry data sets using common geographical regions time intervals and models of surface mass balance and glacial isostatic adjustment to estimate the mass balance of earth s polar ice sheets we find that there is good agreement between different satellite methods especially in greenland and west antarctica and that combining satellite data sets leads to greater certainty between 1992 and 2011 the ice sheets of greenland east antarctica west antarctica and the antarctic peninsula changed in mass by 142 49 14 43 65 26 and 20 14 gigatonnes year 1 respectively since 1992 the polar ice sheets have contributed on average 0 59 0 20 millimeter year 1 to the rate of global sea level rise

changes in the velocity structure of the greenland ice sheet using satellite radar interferometry observations of greenland we detected widespread glacier acceleration below 66 north between 1996 and 2000 which rapidly expanded to 70 north in 2005 accelerated ice discharge in the west and particularly in the east doubled the ice sheet mass deficit in the last decade from 90 to 220 cubic kilometers per year as more glaciers accelerate farther north the contribution of greenland to sea level rise will continue to increase

implications of increased greenland surface melt under global warming scenarios ice sheet simulations abstract the greenland ice sheet is likely to make a faster contribution to sea level rise in a warming world than previously believed based on numerical modelling using a parameterization of recent results showing surface meltwater lubrication of ice flow zwally et al science 297 557 2002 218 documented correlation between increased ice velocity and increased surface melt as parameterized by positive degree days they argued that surface water is piped directly to the bed with little delay causing increased basal water pressures and basal sliding velocities an effect not included in recent greenland ice sheet models known to the authors using the pennsylvania state university university of chicago thermomechanical flowline model numerous simulations were conducted to test a wide range of parameter space linking surface melt with a new sliding law based on the zwally et al data under three different global warming scenarios 2 co2 4 co2 and 8 co2 comparisons to reconstructions generated with a traditional sliding parameterization illustrate an enhanced sensitivity of the ice sheet to surface warming resulting in higher ablation rates additional thinning and retreat of the margin and a reduction in ice volume leading to an increased contribution to global sea level rise

committed sea level rise for the next century from greenland ice sheet dynamics during the past decade we use a three dimensional higher order ice flow model and a realistic initial condition to simulate dynamic perturbations to the greenland ice sheet during the last decade and to assess their contribution to sea level by 2100 starting from our initial condition we apply a time series of observationally constrained dynamic perturbations at the marine termini of greenland s three largest outlet glaciers jakobshavn isbrae helheim glacier and kangerdlugssuaq glacier the initial and long term diffusive thinning within each glacier catchment is then integrated spatially and temporally to calculate a minimum sea level contribution of approximately 1 0 4 mm from these three glaciers by 2100 based on scaling arguments we extend our modeling to all of greenland and estimate a minimum dynamic sea level contribution of approximately 6 2 mm by 2100 this estimate of committed sea level rise is a minimum because it ignores mass loss due to future changes in ice sheet dynamics or surface mass balance importantly 75 of this value is from the long term diffusive response of the ice sheet suggesting that the majority of sea level rise from greenland dynamics during the past decade is yet to come assuming similar and recurring forcing in future decades and a self similar ice dynamical response we estimate an upper bound of 45 mm of sea level rise from greenland dynamics by 2100 these estimates are constrained by recent observations of dynamic mass loss in greenland and by realistic model behavior that accounts for both the long term cumulative mass loss and its decay following episodic boundary forcing

submarine melting of the 1985 jakobshavn isbrae floating tongue and the triggering of the current retreat 1 photogrammetric reanalysis of 1985 aerial photos has revealed substantial submarine melting of the floating ice tongue of jakobshavn isbrae west greenland the thickness of the floating tongue determined from hydrostatic equilibrium tapers from 940 m near the grounding zone to 600 m near the terminus feature tracking on orthophotos shows speeds on the july 1985 ice tongue to be nearly constant 18 5 m d 1 indicating negligible dynamic thinning the thinning of the ice tongue is mostly due to submarine melting with average rates of 228 49 m yr 1 0 62 0 13 m d 1 between the summers of 1984 and 1985 the cause of the high melt rate is the circulation of warm seawater thermal forcing of up to 4 2 c beneath the tongue with convection driven by the substantial discharge of subglacial freshwater from the grounding zone we believe that this buoyancy driven convection is responsible for a deep channel incised into the sole of the floating tongue a dramatic thinning retreat and speedup began in 1998 and continues today the timing of the change is coincident with a 1 1 c warming of deep ocean waters entering the fjord after 1997 assuming a linear relationship between thermal forcing and submarine melt rate average melt rates should have increased by 25 57 m yr 1 sufficient to destabilize the ice tongue and initiate the ice thinning and the retreat that followed

large scale changes in greenland outlet glacier dynamics triggered at the terminus the recent dramatic retreat of many outlet glaciers of the greenland ice sheet has raised concerns over greenland s contribution to future sea level rise simulations with a numerical ice flow model indicate that the recent rates of mass loss in greenland s outlet glaciers are transient and should not be extrapolated into the future

ice flux evolution in fast flowing areas of the greenland ice sheet over the 20th and 21st centuries this study investigates the evolution of greenland ice sheet flux focusing on five of the main fast flowing regions petermann glacier north east greenland ice stream kangerdlugssuaq glacier helheim glacier and jakobshavn glacier in response to 20th and 21st century climate change a hybrid shallow ice and shallow shelf ice sheet model ism is forced with the combined outputs of a set of seven cmip5 models and the regional climate model mar the ism simulates the present day ice velocity pattern topography and surface mass balance smb in good agreement with observations except for the kangerdlugssuaq glacier over the 21st century all the fast flowing areas have exhibited a decrease in ice flux as a result of a negative smb rather than dynamical changes only the fronts of kangerdlugssuaq and helheim glaciers have shown an interannual variability driven by dynamical rather than climate changes finally the results predict a substantial inland ice margin retreat by the end of the 21st century especially along the northern coasts

ice flow in greenland for the international polar year 2008 2009 a digital representation of ice surface velocity is essential for a variety of glaciological geologic and geophysical analyses and modeling here we present a new reference comprehensive high resolution digital mosaic of ice motion in greenland assembled from satellite radar interferometry data acquired during the international polar year 2008 to 2009 by the envisat advanced synthetic aperture radar asar the advanced land observation system alos s phase array l band sar palsar and the radarsat 1 sar that covers 99 of the ice sheet in area the best mapping performance is obtained using alos palsar data due to higher levels of temporal coherence at the l band frequency but c band frequency sar data are less affected by the ionosphere the ice motion map reveals various flow regimes ranging from patterned enhanced flow into a few large glaciers in the cold low precipitation areas of north greenland to diffuse enhanced flow into numerous narrow fast moving glaciers in the warmer high precipitation sectors of northwest and southeast greenland we find that the 100 fastest glaciers v 800m yr drain 66 of the ice sheet in area marine terminating glaciers drain 88 of greenland and basal sliding motion dominates internal deformation over more than 50 of the ice sheet this view of ice sheet motion provides significant new constraints on ice flow modeling copyright 2012 by the american geophysical union

an improved numerical scheme to compute horizontal gradients at the ice sheet margin its effect on the simulated ice thickness and temperature in three dimensional numerical ice sheet models that use finite difference schemes the position of ice margins is poorly represented with a regular quadratic grid as a result in a centered difference scheme the surface gradient term and the flux divergence term computed for the gridpoints next to the ice margin may be inaccurate in this paper an improved scheme is presented that computes the horizontal gradients at the ice sheet margin using an asymmetric upstream second order difference scheme in order to avoid using information from the zero thickness gridpoints the model is applied to an idealized synthetic geometry to obtain a steady state ice sheet topography the improved model shows a realistically smooth thickness distribution near the margin thermomechanical coupling is found to enhance the error near the margin the error in simulated thicknesses with the centered difference method was significantly reduced with the new upstream scheme

surface melt induced acceleration of greenland ice sheet flow ice flow at a location in the equilibrium zone of the west central greenland ice sheet accelerates above the midwinter average rate during periods of summer melting the near coincidence of the ice acceleration with the duration of surface melting followed by deceleration after the melting ceases indicates that glacial sliding is enhanced by rapid migration of surface meltwater to the ice bedrock interface interannual variations in the ice acceleration are correlated with variations in the intensity of the surface melting with larger increases accompanying higher amounts of summer melting the indicated coupling between surface melting and ice sheet flow provides a mechanism for rapid large scale dynamic responses of ice sheets to climate warming

the treatment of meltwater retention in mass balance parameterisations of the greenland ice sheet retention of melt water runoff by percolation and or refreezing in the snowpack cannot be neglected when studying the surface mass balance of the greenlandice sheet in this paper we make a detailed comparison of several treatments proposed in the literature to account for this process in large scale mass balanceparameterizations the melt on the greenland ice sheet is calculated with a revised degree day model using updated datasets of surface elevation and precipitationrate on a 5 km grid crucial model parameters are recalibrated by comparing mass balance characteristics with available observations on a regional basis wediscuss the role of meltwater retention in the light of the overall mass balance of the greenland ice sheet and its sensitivity to climatic change and displaypatterns of effective retention fractions for the various methods as a main conclusion it appears that overall results are quite similar for the various models butthat meltwater retention has a large spatial variation not described by the simple treatments using the most comprehensive retention model the sensitivity of therunoff is found to be 0 35 mm deg c of sea level change per year we also present a new map of the different zones facies that characterize the accumulationarea of the greenland ice sheet that is useful for interpreting field data and calibrating satellite observations

high geothermal heat flow basal melt and the origin of rapid ice flow in central greenland age depth relations from internal layering reveal a large region of rapid basal melting in greenland melt is localized at the onset of rapid ice flow in the large ice stream that drains north off the summit dome and other areas in the northeast quadrant of the ice sheet locally high melt rates indicate geothermal fluxes 15 to 30 times continental background the southern limit of melt coincides with magnetic anomalies and topography that suggest a volcanic origin

greenland ice sheet mass balance distribution of increased mass loss with climate warming 2003 07 versus 1992 2002 we derive mass changes of the greenland ice sheet gis for 2003 07 from icesat laser altimetry and compare them with results for 1992 2002 from ers radar and airborne laser altimetry the gis continued to grow inland and thin at the margins during 2003 07 but surface melting and accelerated flow significantly increased the marginal thinning compared with the 1990s the net balance changed from a small loss of 7 3g t a 1 in the 1990s to 171 4g t a 1 for 2003 07 contributing 0 5 mm a 1 to recent global sea level rise we divide the derived mass changes into two components 1 from changes in melting and ice dynamics and 2 from changes in precipitation and accumulation rate we use our firn compaction model to calculate the elevation changes driven by changes in both temperature and accumulation rate and to calculate the appropriate density to convert the accumulation driven changes to mass changes increased losses from melting and ice dynamics 17 206 gt a 1 are over seven times larger than increased gains from precipitation 10 35 gt a 1 during a warming period of 2 k 10 a 1 over the gis above 2000 m elevation the rate of gain decreased from 44 to 28 gt a 1 while below 2000 m the rate of loss increased from 51 to 198 gt a 1 enhanced thinning below the equilibrium line on outlet glaciers indicates that increased melting has a significant impact on outlet glaciers as well as accelerating ice flow increased thinning at higher elevations appears to be induced by dynamic coupling to thinning at the margins on decadal timescales

initial results of the searise numerical experiments with the models sicopolis and icies for the greenland ice sheet searise sea level response to ice sheet evolution is a us led multi model community effort to predict the likely range of the contribution of the greenland and antarctic ice sheets to sea level rise over the next few hundred years under global warming conditions the japanese ice sheet modelling community is contributing to searise with two large scale dynamic thermodynamic models sicopolis and icies here we discuss results for the greenland ice sheet obtained using both models under the forcings surface temperature and precipitation scenarios defined by the searise effort a crucial point for meaningful simulations into the future is to obtain initial conditions that are close to the observed state of the present day ice sheet this is achieved by proper tuning during model spin up from the last glacial interglacial cycle to today experiments over 500 years indicate that both models are more sensitive exhibit a larger rate of ice sheet mass loss to future climate warming based on the a1b emission scenario than to a doubling in the basal sliding speed ice sheet mass loss varies between the two models by a factor of 2 for sliding experiments and a factor of 3 for climate warming experiments highlighting the importance of improved constraints on the parameterization of basal sliding and surface mass balance in ice sheet models

sensitivity of greenland ice sheet projections to model formulations physically based projections of the greenland ice sheet contribution to future sea level change are subject to uncertainties of the atmospheric and oceanic climatic forcing and to the formulations within the ice flow model itself here a higher order three dimensional thermomechanical ice flow model is used initialized to the present day geometry the forcing comes from a high resolution regional climate model and from a flowline model applied to four individual marine terminated glaciers and results are subsequently extended to the entire ice sheet the experiments span the next 200 years and consider climate scenario sres a1b the surface mass balance smb scheme is taken either from a regional climate model or from a positive degree day pdd model using temperature and precipitation anomalies from the underlying climate models our model results show that outlet glacier dynamics only account for 6 18 of the sea level contribution after 200 years confirming earlier findings that stress the dominant effect of smb changes furthermore interaction between smb and ice discharge limits the importance of outlet glacier dynamics with increasing atmospheric forcing forcing from the regional climate model produces a 14 31 higher sea level contribution compared to a pdd model run with the same parameters as for ipcc ar4

sea level changes at the lgm from ice dynamic reconstructions of the greenland and antarctic ice sheets during the glacial cycles abstract new experiments were performed with three dimensional thermomechanical models of the greenland and antarctic ice sheets to simulate their behaviour during the glacial cycles to reconstruct their thickness and extent at the last glacial maximum lgm and to estimate their glacio eustatic contribution to the global sea level stand the calculations used improved ice dynamic and isostatic treatments updated datasets on higher grid resolutions and refined climatic treatments based on newly calibrated transfer functions between ice core records and climatic perturbations results are discussed from a reference run with standard parameters that is compared with available glacial geological observations and from a series of sensitivity experiments focusing on isostatic adjustment thermomechanical coupling climatic forcing mass balance changes and basal melting rates and viscosity changes of antarctic ice shelves for the antarctic ice sheet we find that volume changes are closely linked with grounding line changes of the west antarctic ice sheet at the lgm the grounding line extended close to the continental shelf break almost everywhere ice over central east antarctica was generally thinner than today and varied mainly in accordance with accumulation fluctuations for the greenland ice sheet melting is important only during interglacial periods and the most sensitive period concerns the size of the ice sheet during the eemian at the lgm the greenland ice sheet extended beyond the present coastline to cover at least the inner continental shelf and thinned by up to several hundred meters in central areas for a plausible range of parameters the experiments indicate that at the time of maximum sea level depression 21 kyr bp the antarctic ice sheet contributed 14 18 m to the sea level lowering and the greenland ice sheet 2 3 m significantly less than the older climap reconstructions whereas both ice sheets were at 21 kyr bp close to their maximum extent the experiments also indicate that their maximum volumes were reached only by 16 5 kyr bp greenland and 10 kyr bp antarctica equal to an additional sea level lowering of respectively 0 4 and 3 7 m holocene retreat was essentially complete by 5 kyr bp in greenland but is found to still continue today in west antarctica before reversing to growth during the next millenium the models were found to reproduce gross features of the ice sheet s history since the lgm in reasonably good agreement with available glacial geological data although observational control on ice thickness changes remains very limited

the dynamic response of the greenland and antarctic ice sheets to multiple century climatic warming new calculations were performed to investigate the combined response of the greenland and antarctic ice sheets to a range of climatic warming scenarios over the next millennium use was made of fully dynamic 3d thermomechanic ice sheet models which were coupled to a two dimensional climate model the experiments were initialized with simulations over the last two glacial cycles to estimate the present evolution and were subsequently forced with temperature scenarios resulting from greenhouse emission scenarios which assume equivalent co2 increases of two four and eight times the present 1990 a d value by the year 2130 a d and a stabilization after that the calculations brought to light that during the next century short term effect the background evolution trend would dominate the response of the antarctic ice sheet but would be negligible for the greenland ice sheet on that timescale the greenland and antarctic ice sheets would roughly balance one another for the middle scenario similar to the ipcc96 is92a scenario with respective contributions to the worldwide sea level stand on the order of about 610 cm on the longer term however both ice sheets would contribute positively to the worldwide sea level stand and the most important effect would come from melting on the greenland ice sheet sensitivity experiments highlighted the role of ice dynamics and the height massbalance feedback on the results it was found that ice dynamics cannot be neglected for the greenland ice sheet not even on a century timescale but becomes only important for antarctica on the longer term the latter is related to an increased outflow of ice into the ice shelves and to the grounding line retreat of the west antarctic ice sheet which are both found to be sensitive to basal melting below ice shelves and the effective viscosity of the ice shelves stretching parameters to their limits yielded a combined maximum rate of sea level rise of 85 cm century21 of which 60 cm would originate from the greenland ice sheet alone

acceleration of jakobshavn isbrae triggered by warm subsurface ocean waters observations over past decades show a sudden switch of jakobshavn isbrae a large outlet glacier feeding a deep ocean fjord on greenland s west coast from slow thickening to rapid thinning in 1997 this switch is associated with a doubling in glacier velocity hydrographic data show a concurrent sudden increase in subsurface ocean temperatures along the entire west coast of greenland suggesting that the changes in jakobshavn isbrae were triggered by the arrival of relatively warm water originating from the irminger sea observations over the past decades show a rapid acceleration of several outlet glaciers in greenland and antarctica1 one of the largest changes is a sudden switch of jakobshavn isbrae a large outlet glacier feeding a deep ocean fjord on greenland s west coast from slow thickening to rapid thinning2 in 1997 associated with a doubling in glacier velocity3 suggested explanations for the speed up of jakobshavn isbrae include increased lubrication of the ice bedrock interface as more meltwater has drained to the glacier bed during recent warmer summers4 and weakening and break up of the floating ice tongue that buttressed the glacier5 here we present hydrographic data that show a sudden increase in subsurface ocean temperature in 1997 along the entire west coast of greenland suggesting that the changes in jakobshavn isbrae were instead triggered by the arrival of relatively warm water originating from the irminger sea near iceland we trace these oceanic changes back to changes in the atmospheric circulation in the north atlantic region we conclude that the prediction of future rapid dynamic responses of other outlet glaciers to climate change will require an improved understanding of the effect of changes in regional ocean and atmosphere circulation on the delivery of warm subsurface waters to the periphery of the ice sheets

melt induced speed up of greenland ice sheet offset by efficient subglacial drainage fluctuations in surface melting are known to affect the speed of glaciers and ice sheets but their impact on the greenland ice sheet in a warming climate remains uncertain although some studies suggest that greater melting produces greater ice sheet acceleration others have identified a long term decrease in greenland s flow despite increased melting here we use satellite observations of ice motion recorded in a land terminating sector of southwest greenland to investigate the manner in which ice flow develops during years of markedly different melting although peak rates of ice speed up are positively correlated with the degree of melting mean summer flow rates are not because glacier slowdown occurs on average when a critical run off threshold of about 1 4 centimetres a day is exceeded in contrast to the first half of summer when flow is similar in all years speed up during the latter half is 62 16 per cent less in warmer years consequently in warmer years the period of fast ice flow is three times shorter and overall summer ice flow is slower this behaviour is at odds with that expected from basal lubrication alone instead it mirrors that of mountain glaciers where melt induced acceleration of flow ceases during years of high melting once subglacial drainage becomes efficient a model of ice sheet flow that captures switching between cavity and channel drainage modes is consistent with the run off threshold fast flow periods and later summer speeds we have observed simulations of the greenland ice sheet flow under climate warming scenarios should account for the dynamic evolution of subglacial drainage a simple model of basal lubrication alone misses key aspects of the ice sheet s response to climate warming

surface mass balance changes of the greenland ice sheet since 1866 mass loss from the greenland ice sheet over the past decade has caused the impression that the ice sheet has been behaving anomalously to the warming of the 1990s we have reconstructed the recent 1866 2005 surface mass balance smb history of the greenland ice sheet on a 5 5 km grid using a runoff retention model based on the positive degree day method the model is forced with new datasets of temperature and precipitation patterns dating back to 1866 we use an innovative method to account for the influence of year on year surface elevation changes on smb estimates and have found this effect to be minor all smb estimates are made relative to the 1961 90 average smb and we compare annual smb estimates from the period 1995 2005 to a similar period in the past 1923 33 where smb was comparable and conclude that the present day changes are not exceptional within the last 140 years peripheral thinning has dominated the smb response during the past decade as in 1923 33 but we also show that thinning was not restricted to the margins during this earlier period

sermeq model produces a realistic upper bound on calving retreat for 155 greenland outlet glaciers the rate of land ice loss due to iceberg calving is a key source of variability among model projections of 21st century sea level rise it is especially challenging to account for mass loss due to

high resolution 1 km positive degree day modelling of greenland ice sheet surface mass balance 1870 2012 using reanalysis data we show results from a positive degree day pdd model of greenland ice sheet gris surface mass balance smb 1870 2012 forced with reanalysis data the model includes an improved daily temperature parameterization as compared with a previous version and is run at 1 km rather than 5 km resolution the improvements lead overall to higher smb with the same forcing data we also compare our model with results from two regional climate models rcms while there is good qualitative agreement between our pdd model and the rcms it usually results in lower precipitation and lower runoff but approximately equivalent smb mean 1979 2012 smb standard deviation in gt a 1 is 382 78 in the pdd model compared with 379 101 and 425 90 for the rcms comparison with in situ smb observations suggests that the rcms may be more accurate than pdd at local level in some areas although the latter generally compares well dividing the gris into seven drainage basins we show that smb has decreased sharply in all regions since 2000 finally we show correlation between runoff close to two calving glaciers and either calving front retreat or calving flux this being most noticeable from the mid 1990s the author s 2016

recent retreat of major outlet glaciers on novaya zemlya russian arctic influenced by fjord geometry and sea ice conditions substantial ice loss has occurred in the russian high arctic during the past decade predominantly on novaya zemlya yet the region has been studied relatively little consequently the factors forcing mass loss and the relative contribution of ice dynamics versus surface melt are poorly understood here we evaluate the influence of atmospheric oceanic forcing and variations in fjord width on the behaviour of 38 glaciers on the northern ice cap novaya zemlya we compare retreat rates on land versus marine terminating outlets and on the kara versus barents sea coasts between 1992 and 2010 90 of the study glaciers retreated and retreat rates were an order of magnitude higher for marine terminating outlets 52 1 m a 1 than for land terminating glaciers 4 8 m a 1 we identify a post 2000 acceleration in marine terminating glacier retreat which corresponded closely to changes in sea ice concentrations retreat rates were higher on the barents sea coast which we partly attribute to lower sea ice concentrations but varied dramatically between individual glaciers we use empirical data to categorize changes in along flow fjord width and demonstrate a significant relationship between fjord width variability and retreat rate results suggest that variations in fjord width exert a major influence on glacier retreat

the effect of a holocene climatic optimum on the evolution of the greenland ice sheet during the last 10 kyr the holocene climatic optimum was a period 8 5 kyr ago when annual mean surface temperatures in greenland were 2 3 c warmer than present day values however this warming left little imprint on commonly used temperature proxies often used to derive the climate forcing for simulations of the past evolution of the greenland ice sheet in this study we investigate the evolution of the greenland ice sheet through the holocene when forced by different proxy derived temperature histories from ice core records focusing on the effect of sustained higher surface temperatures during the early holocene we find that the ice sheet retreats to a minimum volume of 0 15 1 2 m sea level equivalent smaller than present in the early or mid holocene when forcing an ice sheet model with temperature reconstructions that contain a climatic optimum and that the ice sheet has continued to recover from this minimum up to present day reconstructions without a warm climatic optimum in the early holocene result in smaller ice losses continuing throughout the last 10 kyr for all the simulated ice sheet histories the ice sheet is approaching a steady state at the end of the 20th century

modeling the lava heat flux during severe effusive volcanic eruption an important impact on surface air quality the april 2007 eruption of piton de la fournaise one of the most active volcanoes in the world was the strongest eruption in recent decades with 230mm3 of lava emitted and more 300kt of so2 degased the surface concentrations of so2 have been measured by the ora air observatory of the reunion island and showed that many stations exceeded the critic threshold for health these high concentrations led to important health issues accompanied by environmental and infrastructure degradations realized with mesonh atmospheric model our simulations show the transport of sulfur and his component between 2 april and 6 april 2007 with a focus on the influence of heat flow from lava for this purpose we have implemented forefire a surface model initially realized to simulate forest fire by adapting it to reproduce the dynamic of a lava flow thus all flows so2 heat vapor co2 co are triggered depending on its dynamic with this first approach our simulations reproduce quite faithfully the surface field observation of so2 provides by ora various sensitivity analyzes exhibit that volcano sulfur distribution was mainly controlled by the lava heat flow without heat flow parameterization the surface concentrations are multiplied by a factor 30 compared to the reference simulation simulations also put in evidence that the 5 april during the height of the eruption changes in meteorological conditions especially weakening of atmospheric boundary layer stability led to various pollutants to be transported in higher altitude 8000m the main consequence is the volcanic pollutants are transported off the east coast of reunion island

large and rapid melt induced velocity changes in the ablation zone of the greenland ice sheet continuous global positioning system observations reveal rapid and large ice velocity fluctuations in the western ablation zone of the greenland ice sheet within days ice velocity reacts to increased meltwater production and increases by a factor of 4 such a response is much stronger and much faster than previously reported over a longer period of 17 years annual ice velocities have decreased slightly which suggests that the englacial hydraulic system adjusts constantly to the variable meltwater input which results in a more or less constant ice flux over the years the positive feedback mechanism between melt rate and ice velocity appears to be a seasonal process that may have only a limited effect on the response of the ice sheet to climate warming over the next decades

balance velocities of the greenland ice sheet we present a map of balance velocities for the greenland ice sheet the resolution of the underlying dem which was derived primarily from radar altimetery data yields far greater detail than earlier balance velocity estimates for greenland the velocity contours reveal in striking detail the location of an ice stream in northeastern greenland which was only recently discovered using satellite imagery enhanced flow associated with all of the major outlets is clearly visible although small errors in the source data result in less accurate estimates of the absolute flow speeds nevertheless the balance map is useful for ice sheet modelling mass balance studies and field planning

greenland s contribution to global sea level rise by the end of the 21st century the greenland ice sheet holds enough water to raise the global sea level with 7 m over the last few decades observations manifest a substantial increase of the mass loss of this ice sheet both enhanced melting and increase of the dynamical discharge associated with calving at the outlet glacier fronts are contributing to the mass imbalance using a dynamical and thermodynamical ice sheet model and taking into account speed up of outlet glaciers we estimate greenland s contribution to the 21st century global sea level rise and the uncertainty of this estimate boundary fields of temperature and precipitation extracted from coupled climate model projections used for the ipcc fourth assessment report are applied to the ice sheet model we implement a simple parameterization for increased flow of outlet glaciers which decreases the bias of the modeled present day surface height it also allows for taking into account the observed recent increase in dynamical discharge and it can be used for future projections associated with outlet glacier speed up greenland contributes 0 17 cm to global sea level rise by the end of the 21st century this range includes the uncertainties in climate model projections the uncertainty associated with scenarios of greenhouse gas emissions as well as the uncertainties in future outlet glacier discharge in addition the range takes into account the uncertainty of the ice sheet model and its boundary fields

petrographic and mineralogical study of new eh melt rocks and a new enstatite chondrite grouplet enstatite chondrites are classified into eh and el groups and some of them were melted once in this paper we report petrography and mineral chemistry of five new antarctic enstatite chondrites yamato 793225 is characterized by intermediate properties between the eh and el groups and probably represents a new grouplet of enstatite chondrites the three paired meteorites y 8404 y 8414 and y 86004 may have cooled rapidly near the surface of the parent body as impact eh melt rocks yamato 82189 is also classified as eh melt rock but it experienced slow cooling as did y 793225 yamato 82189 contains the first occurrence of phlogopite in enstatite meteorites

combined measurements of subglacial water pressure and surface velocity of findelengletscher switzerland conclusions about drainage system and sliding mechanism interpretation des mesures de pression dans les forages et des vitesses superficielles la comparaison avec les modeles suggere que l on a neglige le frottement du aux debris dans les modeles et qu il n existe jamais de chenaux cylindriques rectilignes

simulations of the greenland ice sheet 100 years into the future with the full stokes model elmer ice it is likely that climate change will have a significant impact on the mass balance of the greenland ice sheet contributing to future sea level rise here we present the implementation of the full stokes model elmer ice for the greenland ice sheet which includes a mesh refinement technique in order to resolve fast flowing ice streams and outlet glaciers we discuss simulations 100 years into the future forced by scenarios defined by the searise sea level response to ice sheet evolution community effort for comparison the same experiments are also run with the shallow ice model sicopolis simulation code for polythermal ice sheets we find that elmer ice is 43 more sensitive exhibits a larger loss of ice sheet volume relative to the control run than sicopolis for the ice dynamic scenario doubled basal sliding but 61 less sensitive for the direct global warming scenario based on the a1 b moderate emission scenario for greenhouse gases the scenario with combined a1b global warming and doubled basal sliding forcing produces a greenland contribution to sea level rise of 15cm for elmer ice and 12cm for sicopolis over the next 100 years