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We have a new open-access study in the current volume of Frontiers in Earth Science that tries to estimate snow density across the Greenland Ice Sheet¹. Snow density might seem like an unexciting topic, but it is fundamental to blending ice-sheet thinning or thickening observations with surface mass balance simulations to assess ice-sheet health. Clearly, assuming a snow density of 400 kg/m³ makes a snowfall event observed by satellite altimeter twice as massive as assuming a snow density of 200 kg/m³ (and vice versa). There are several mathematical formulations presently being used to estimate snow density. These existing approaches generally estimate snow density as a function of more accessible geographic or climatic parameters.

Figure 1 – Locations of the surface snow density measurements collected in this public dataset. Contours lines indicate elevations in meters above sea level.

In this study, we assembled a large database of snow density measurements from the Greenland Ice Sheet. These measurements were collected from a variety of scientific expeditions going back to 1954, and provide the most complete spatial coverage of the ice sheet that is presently possible. Despite running a lot of statistics on this database, we could not find a compelling proxy for snow density. Our analysis indicates that snow density cannot be reliably predicted by common geographic (i.e. elevation, latitude or longitude) or climatic (i.e. air temperature or accumulation rate) variables. As existing approaches to estimate snow density rely on these common geographic and climatic variables, this was a somewhat unexpected finding.

Figure 2 – Snow density (0 to 10 cm depth) plotted against: (a) measurement year, (b) site latitude, (c) site longitude, (d) site elevation, (e) mean annual air temperature, and (f) accumulation rate.

Our study therefore recommends that the average measured density of 315 ± 44 kg/m³ (± standard deviation) is the most statistically defensible assumption for snow density. This recommendation of a constant, or zero-order approximation, differs from previous studies that have recommended estimating snow density as a second-order polynomial function of near-surface ice-sheet temperature. We show that these previous approaches may systematically overestimate snow density by 17 to 19 %. This is partially due to their mathematical formulations, but mainly due to previously considering measurement depths of up to 1 m as characteristic of “snow density”. As density increases with depth in the relatively porous near-surface layers of the ice sheet, we are instead careful to only include density measurements to a depth of 10 cm.

Figure 3 – Snow density (0-10 cm depth) versus mean annual air temperature. Solid line indicates the regression of this study, while the dotted and dashed lines indicate previously published temperature-dependent formulations for estimating snow density.

We hope that the approach of estimating snow density that we are proposing, which is mathematically less complex but statistically more robust, will be useful to researchers working with both surface mass balance simulations and satellite altimetry observations, as well as researchers modelling process-level studies of snow compaction and meltwater percolation in the near-surface ice-sheet layers. This study was supported by the Danish Research Council and the Programme for Monitoring of the Greenland Ice Sheet. Our database of 254 snow density measurements is freely available in the supplementary material of the study.

¹Fausto R., J. Box, B. Vandecrux, D. van As, K. Steffen, M. MacFerrin, H. Machguth, W. Colgan, L. Koenig, D. McGrath, C. Charalampidis and R. Braithwaite. 2018. A Snow Density Dataset for Improving Surface Boundary Conditions in Greenland Ice Sheet Firn Modeling. Frontiers in Earth Science 6:51. doi:10.3389/feart.2018.00051.

Here’s a plain-written intro to our paper on Greenland Ice Sheet snow density: https://t.co/eKmcnALonB
The unexpected upshot? Snow density does not actually appear to vary w/ geographic or climatic variables! ❄️ pic.twitter.com/ILwFkTZRdS

— William Colgan (@GlacierBytes) May 7, 2018

We have an open-access study that explores the various ways by which meltwater drains from the Greenland ice sheet in the current volume of Journal of Glaciology¹. While surface meltwater rivers and lakes are a conspicuous feature of the Greenland ice sheet, virtually all meltwater that drains from the ice-sheet margin is flowing either within or beneath the ice sheet, rather than on its surface. Where and how meltwater reaches the ice-sheet bed can have implications on ice dynamics. For example, the sharp pulses of meltwater transmitted to the bed by near-vertical conduits called moulins are believed to cause more sliding at the ice-bed interface than the subdued pulses transmitted by crevasses.

In the study, we simulated a portion of the ice sheet in West Greenland known as Paakitsoq, using a computer model. The model used the measured ice sheet topography, as well as observed locations of crevasses and moulins, to simulate how meltwater was produced and flowed across the ice sheet surface under the climate conditions of the 2009 average intensity melt season and the 2012 extreme intensity melt season. The model could also simulate catastrophic lake drainage events, known as hydrofracture events, when a surface lake becomes sufficiently deep that its pressure fractures the underlying ice and creates a new moulin.

Figure 1 – Location of the Paakitsoq study area. Black outline denotes the model domain. Blue dots denote moulin locations identified in satellite imagery. Black contours denote surface elevations. Base image is Landsat-8 from 4 August 2014.

Our simulations suggested that, during an average intensity melt season, crevasses drain almost half (47 %) of ice-sheet meltwater. The hydrofracture of surface lakes drained about 24 % of ice-sheet meltwater, the majority of which resulted from drainage into new moulins following hydrofracture events, rather than the hydrofracture events themselves. Previously existing moulins drained an additional 15 % of meltwater. (The remaining meltwater either reached the ice-sheet margin, remained stored within the model area, or drained to ice-sheet areas North or South of the model area.)

While our simulations suggest that crevasses now drain more meltwater from the ice sheet at Paakitsoq (47 %) than previously existing and newly hydrofractured moulins together (39 %), our 2012 extreme intensity melt season simulation suggests that this ratio may change. The proportion of meltwater drainage via moulins increases, and the proportion of drainage via crevasses decreases, in the 2012 extreme intensity melt season simulation, which may be characteristic of a warmer future climate. This increase in both relative and absolute moulin drainage under warmer conditions is due to an increase in moulins created by hydrofracture events, as meltwater production moves to higher elevations.

Figure 2 – Partitioning surface meltwater drainage into eight categories under the average melt (2009; R1) and extreme melt (2012; R11) simulations. “Lake” is the volume remaining in lakes at season end. “Remaining Flow” is the volume in transit at season end. “Lateral Outflow” is the volume that drains through North and South model domain boundaries. “Ice Margin” is the volume that reaches the ice-sheet edge. The volumes captured in “Crevasses” and “Moulins” are denoted. The volumes drained by lake hydrofracture induced surface-to-bed connections are “Lake Hydrofracture Lake” (LHL), while the subsequent drainage into the new surface-to-bed connection is “Lake Hydrofracture Moulin” (LHM).

Overall, our study provided insight on the space-time variation of pathways by which the vast majority of ice-sheet meltwater descends to the ice-sheet bed prior to reaching the ice-sheet margin. A better understanding of how meltwater travels through the ice-sheet can help improve scientific understanding of not only the ice-sheet mass loss caused by runoff, but also the implications of increasing meltwater production on the mass loss caused ice dynamics. Our simulations also suggest there is value in ice-sheet wide mapping of surface hydrology features like crevasses, rivers, lakes, and moulins, as computer models can use this knowledge to improve simulations of meltwater routing.

¹Koziol, C., N. Arnold, A. Pope and W. Colgan. 2017. Quantifying supraglacial meltwater pathways in the Paakitsoq region, West Greenland. Journal of Glaciology. 1-13. doi:10.1017/jog.2017.5

Intro to our #openaccess study partitioning ice-sheet runoff via crevasses & moulins under differing melt intensity: https://t.co/eXWnY4jzCI pic.twitter.com/fgTffICmfy

— William Colgan (@GlacierBytes) March 22, 2017

We have a new study out this month in Frontiers in Earth Science¹ that describes using an old-school hydrogeology method on the Greenland Ice Sheet. We used pump-testing, which has been conventionally used to measure soil permeability for groundwater flow, to infer the permeability of ice-sheet firn to meltwater flow. We wanted to quantitatively measure how massive ice layers formed by refreezing meltwater in the near-surface ice sheet firn could inhibit meltwater flow in subsequent years.

Figure 1 – The low tech and low cost pump-testing device used to infer firn permeability on the Greenland Ice Sheet. A vacuum is applied at depth in the sealed vacuum borehole and the resulting pressure response is measured in the sealed monitoring borehole.

In conventional pump-testing, water is pumped out of a borehole at a controlled rate, and the groundwater level response, or drawdown is observed in a monitoring borehole located some distance away. We did something similar in the ice-sheet firn, pumping air out of a vacuum borehole and measuring the air pressure response is a sealed monitoring borehole about one meter away. We did pump tests at six ice sheet sites that had varying degrees of massive ice layers in the near-surface firn.

We found that vertical permeability between firn layers was generally much lower than horizontal permeability within a firn layer, and that vertical permeability decreased with increasing ice content. At the lowest elevation site, where meltwater production and refreezing is most prevalent, we drilled into an exceptionally massive ice layer the pump borehole was able to maintain an effective vacuum. In other words, thick massive ice layers are indeed impermeable to fluids. That was a little surprising!

Figure 2 – Inferred horizontal (kr) and vertical (kz) firn permeability values at five ice-sheet sites. Horizontal blue lines indicate the depths of ice layers at each site. Vertical cyan and magenta shading represents inferred permeability limits.

While it may sound esoteric, the permeability of near-surface firn is an increasingly visible topic in ice-sheet research. Studies have shown that firn can act to either buffer sea level rise by absorbing meltwater², or enhance sea level rise by forming impermeable refrozen ice layers³. As climate change increases meltwater production within the historical accumulation zone of the ice sheet, a greater area of ice-sheet hydrology will be influenced by refrozen ice layers. In future, higher vacuum pressures and repeated measurements should allow firn permeability to be measured over larger scales to improve our understanding of changing firn permeability.

For now, the proof-of-concept pump-testing device is relatively low tech and low cost. Aside from air-pressure sensors and a data logger, it was constructed by items you could find at your local hardware store; plastic PVC pipes channeling the power of a shop vacuum. Development of the firn pump-testing device was initiated by a University of Colorado Dean’s Graduate Student Research Grant to highly innovative lead-author Aleah Sommers, and it was deployed in collaboration with the FirnCover project during the 2016 field campaign.

Figure 3 – Max Stevens and Aleah Sommers preparing to insert the pressure sensor and seal into the monitoring borehole at Saddle, Greenland, in May 2016.

¹Sommers et al. 2017. Inferring Firn Permeability from Pneumatic Testing: A Case Study on the Greenland Ice Sheet. Frontiers in Earth Science. 5: 20.

²Harper et al. 2012. Greenland ice-sheet contribution to sea-level rise buffered by meltwater storage in firn. Nature. 491: 240-243.

³Machguth et al. 2016. Greenland meltwater storage in firn limited by near-surface ice formation. Nature Climate Change. 6: 390-393.

Intro to our new study inferring #Greenland firn permeability from pump-testing. Hydrogeology meets the ice sheet!https://t.co/3aPjIlMixd pic.twitter.com/lK76Nfa4gA

— William Colgan (@GlacierBytes) March 6, 2017

The glaciological archive of the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland has accumulated both dust and documents over the years. This makes searching through this archive for glacier surface mass balance measurements a tedious task, as it means looking at every individual item. The occasional discovery of hand-written field notes describing a ten-year surface mass balance record can feel like finding a diamond in the rough.

Over the past five years, Horst Machguth led a team of 34 authors from 18 institutions in a near-exhaustive collection of historical surface mass balance observations from the Greenland ice sheet ablation area and peripheral glaciers. The database, which now contains 3000 measurements of surface mass balance, was published online this July in the Journal of Glaciology¹. The measurements span 123 years, from the earliest surface mass balance measurements of Erich von Drygalski’s 1882-1883 Greenland Expedition of the Berlin Geographical Society, up to present-day automated weather station measurements.

Figure 1 – Overview of the data contained in the surface mass-balance database. (a) Temporal availability of data for each site and temporal resolution of the data. (b) Number of active measuring sites over time. (c) Number of active measuring points over time.

Approximately 60 % of the measurements were sourced from grey literature and unpublished documents scoured from the archives of the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland. Almost forgotten and inaccessible to scientists outside the Survey, they are essentially once again “new to science”. Some measurements, however, remain elusive, like those of Simpson’s 1952-1954 British North Greenland Expedition, and some other mid-20th Century expeditions.

Most measurements were made prior to the widespread adoption of handheld GPS devices. Making these data functional in today’s computer-based research environment turned out to be a major task, as it required translating numerous historical site diagrams into georeferenced latitude and longitude coordinate systems. Innovative solutions were adopted to translate ice surface elevation measurements made by the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) into surface mass balance values: cross-sectional profile of a supra-glacial access road could be translated into year-on-year changes in surface elevation equivalent to surface mass balance.

Figure 2 – A US Army Corps of Engineering map of Nunatarssuaq Ice Ramp georeferenced with a modern digital elevation model.

Having brought together these temporally and spatially diverse measurements into a common digital database now offers an unprecedented opportunity to evaluate the accuracy of surface mass balance simulated by regional climate models. Even on their own, however, the data highlight the diverse rates of change in surface mass balance with elevation around the periphery of the Greenland ice sheet. The value of this data rescue project is perhaps highlighted by the fact that the database has already been used in at least five studies. The database provides a unique tool for understanding the climate sensitivity of Greenland glacier and ice sheet melt over the past century!

¹MACHGUTH, H., THOMSEN, H.H., WEIDICK, A., AHLSTRØM, A.P., ABERMANN, J., ANDERSEN, M.L., ANDERSEN, S.B., BJØRK, A.A., BOX, J.E., BRAITHWAITE, R.J., BØGGILD, C.E., CITTERIO, M., CLEMENT, P., COLGAN, W., FAUSTO, R.S., GLEIE, K., GUBLER, S., HASHOLT, B., HYNEK, B., KNUDSEN, N.T., LARSEN, S.H., MERNILD, S.H., OERLEMANS, J., OERTER, H., OLESEN, O.B., SMEETS, C.J.P.P., STEFFEN, K., STOBER, M., SUGIYAMA, S., VAN AS, D., VAN DEN BROEKE, M.R. and VAN DE WAL, R.S.W. (2016) Greenland surface mass-balance observations from the ice-sheet ablation area and local glaciers. Journal of Glaciology, 1–27. doi: 10.1017/jog.2016.75.

We have a new open-access study in the current volume of Annals of Glaciology that tracks the fate of meltwater in the relatively porous near-surface firn of the Greenland Ice Sheet using temperature sensors¹ (available here). One of the main goals of this study was to understand what fraction of the meltwater produced at the ice sheet surface percolates vertically into the firn and locally refreezes, rather than leaving the ice sheet as runoff and contributing to sea level rise. The total retention capacity of all of Greenland’s firn could be a non-trivial buffer against sea level rise².

For this particular study, we deployed firn temperature sensors at depths of up to 15 m at KAN_U. The sensors were automated to record data throughout the year, between our spring sites visits. KAN_U is located at 1840 m elevation in Southwest Greenland in the lower accumulation area. While KAN_U traditionally receives more mass from snowfall than it loses from melt, our study focused on the “extreme” 2012 melt season, which was the first year since records began that there was more meltwater runoff than snowfall at the site.

Figure 1 – Lead author Charalampos Charalampidis drilling a borehole on the Greenland Ice Sheet near KAN_U during the 2013 spring field campaign.

As refreezing meltwater releases a tremendous amount of latent energy, the location of refreezing meltwater within the firn can be inferred from temperature anomalies. We assessed temperature anomalies by comparing our observed firn temperatures against modeled firn temperatures, whereby the modeled temperatures only accounted for heat exchanged with the ice sheet surface via diffusion, not latent heat release. This allowed us to identify depths where firn temperatures were warmer than expected.

Figure 2 – Automated observations of firn temperatures in the top 10 m of firn at KAN_U over four years. There is a strong annual cycle in near-surface firn temperatures.

We found that despite 2012 being an extreme melt year, meltwater percolation and refreezing only occurred to 2.5 m depth during the melt season. It was only after the end of the melt season that some meltwater managed to percolate and refreeze in discrete bands at 5.5 and 8.5 m depth. This inference of relatively inefficient vertical meltwater percolation during the melt season appears to support the idea that thick and impermeable ice lenses that had previously formed within the firn during 2010 were inhibiting the percolation of 2012 meltwater³.

Maintaining the relatively sensitive automatic weather station needed to accurately measure firn temperatures and surface energy fluxes in the relatively harsh ice sheet environment was no easy task. It took a number of scientists and funding agencies, which are listed in the acknowledgement section of the paper, to make this study possible. The KAN_U weather station continues to report real-time climate data via the Programme for Monitoring of the Greenland Ice Sheet (PROMICE) data portal: www.promice.dk.

Figure 3 – A: Location of Kangerlussuaq Upper Station (KAN_U) on the Greenland Ice Sheet. B: A PROMICE climate station deployed to measure firn temperatures and surface energy budget.

¹Charalampidis, C., D. van As, W. Colgan, R. Fausto, M. MacFerrin and H. Machguth. 2016. Thermal tracing of retained meltwater in the lower accumulation area of the Southwestern Greenland ice sheet. Annals of Glaciology. doi:10.1017/aog.2016.2.

²Harper, J., N. Humphrey, W. Pfeffer, J. Brown and X. Fettweis. 2012. Greenland ice-sheet contribution to sea-level rise buffered by meltwater storage in firn. Nature. 491: 240-243.

³Machguth, H., M. MacFerrin, D. van As, J. Box, C. Charalampidis, W. Colgan, R. Fausto, H. Meijer, E. Mosley-Thompson and R. van de Wal. 2016. Greenland meltwater storage in firn limited by near-surface ice formation. Nature Climate Change. 6: 390–393.

Intro to our new #Greenland firn temp. study inferring suppressed melt percolation in 2012: https://t.co/yDRXRzmjaG pic.twitter.com/75EeukYk5v

— William Colgan (@GlacierBytes) May 19, 2016

Our Arctic Circle Traverse 2016 (“ACT16”) campaign is getting underway next month, and one look at the expedition map and it seems like we’ve outgrown our name! The ACT expedition series began in 2004, as snowmobile traverses roughly aligned with the Arctic Circle (66 °N) in support of the NASA Program for Arctic Regional Climate Assessment (PARCA). Since the 2013 initiation of the NASA FirnCover program, however, there has been a strong motivation to simultaneously sample more remote sites on the ice sheet. Firn compaction rate, the key process that FirnCover seeks to measure and model, is sensitive to both air temperature and snowfall rate. That means firn compaction rates vary with latitude and elevation, so when the FirnCover team goes to Greenland, we try to sample the ice sheet from North-South and low-high. That makes for a lot of travel!

Figure 1 – Logistics behind our Arctic Circle Traverse 2016 (ACT16) expedition route. Red denotes US Air National Guard flights. Purple denotes NSF charter flights. Green denotes commercial flights. Blue denotes snowmobile traverses.

This April the ACT16 team will gather in Schenectady, NY to hitch a ride to Kangerlussuaq, GL with the US Air National Guard. After a pause in Kanger, the 109^th Airlift Wing will deliver us to their Camp Raven skiway near Dye-2 in the ice sheet interior. Once in the ice sheet interior, the ACT16 team will fission into two groups, with a base group staying at Dye-2 for detailed firn measurements, and a traverse group snowmobiling to firn instrumentation sites along the Arctic Circle. Afterwards, our two groups will join up and catch an NSF charter flight off the ice to Kanger for some brief decompression. Then a subset of the ACT16 team will fly north to Summit and the NEGIS deep coring site for more firn instrumentation and measurements. Eventually we’ll make our way back to Kanger and head home on commercial flights via Iceland. With military and NSF charter flights, temperamental snowmobiles, and a mix of commercial airlines, the logistics for this five week field season are pretty intense!

Figure 2 – A ski-equipped C-130 from the 109th Airlift Wing of the US Air National Guard taxiing on the Camp Raven skiway near Dye-2 during ACT13.

I’m most excited to visit NEGIS, not because I think it will be any more (or less) spectacular than any other location in the ice sheet interior, but simply because I haven’t been there before. A new dot on the map is always cause for delight. This field season, however, I will be keeping track of my personal carbon footprint, and I expect the charter flight to NEGIS and back is going to figure prominently in that calculation.

This post is cross-posted on the FirnCover blog.

We have a new review paper on glacier crevasses in the current issue of Reviews of Geophysics¹. We survey sixty years of crevasse studies, from field observations to numerical modeling to remote sensing of crevasses, and also provide a synthesis of ten distinct mechanisms via which crevasses influence glacier mass balance.

Two years ago, our team embarked on what was supposed to be a brief review of crevasse science to help interpret maps of Greenland crevasse extent that we are generating from laser altimetry data as part of a NASA project entitled “Assessing Greenland Crevasse Extent and Characteristics Using Historical ICESat and Airborne Laser Altimetry Data”. The final review ended up containing 250 references and being 43 typeset pages in length. Evidently we found the crevasse life cycle contained more nuances than we had initially assumed! Here are some of the highlights that have shifted our paradigm:

Field observations – Although crevasses are conventionally conceptualized to initiate at the surface and propagate downwards, we were surprised to find compelling evidence that at least some crevasses initiate at several metres depth, before propagating upwards to appear at the glacier surface. For example, observations that new crevasses can intersect relict crevasses at angles as low as 5 ° indicates that the stresses governing fracture are below the depth of relict crevasses (as relict crevasses do not serve as stress foci). This has implications for interpreting “buried” crevasses as relict or active.

Figure 1 – Measured principal strain rates and crevasse locations observed circa 1995 at Worthington Glacier, USA². The cross-cutting of relict crevasses by active crevasses indicates relative crevasse chronologies can exist at a single point on a glacier.

Numerical modeling – While crevasses have conventionally been assumed to form perpendicular to principal extending stresses on glaciers, we were intrigued to find strong model evidence that non-trivial crevasse curvature and rotation can result when there is substantial shearing (Mode III fracture) acting in addition to the more the common opening (Mode I fracture). The role of such mixed-mode fracture in shaping crevasse geometry has implications for interpreting curved / rotated crevasses as either deformed following opening or in equilibrium with local shear.

Figure 2 – Schematic illustrating the three modes of fracture: Mode I (opening), Mode II (sliding), and Mode III (tearing).

Remote Sensing – Remote sensing technologies for crevasse detection exhibited remarkable growth over the past 60 years. Real-time crevasse detection for traverse vehicles advanced from Cold War era rudimentary push-broom “dishpans”, which measured bulk electric current density of surrounding ice, to modern fully autonomous rovers capable of executing ground penetrating radar grids. In terms of satellite imagery, crevasses went from being manually delineated in the coarse resolution visible imagery that became available in the 1970s to now being automatically detected by feature tracking algorithms in higher resolution visible and synthetic aperture radar imagery.

Figure 3 – Left: Cold War era “dishpan” detection system that inferred crevasses from changes in bulk electric current density³. Right: An autonomous ground-penetrating radar unit (Yeti) being used to map near-surface buried crevasses at White Island, Antarctica. (Photo: Jim Lever)

Mass Balance Implications – While many studies have described individual mechanisms by which crevasses can influence glacier mass balance, we wanted to provide an overview of all the possible mechanisms, and we were fortunate enough to have a graphic artist help us do it in a single schematic. The mass balance implications of crevasses contain several counter-intuitive nuances. For example, crevasses can enhance basal sliding in the accumulation area and suppress basal sliding in the ablation area. Given their myriad mass balance implications, however, crevasses may serve as both indicators and agents of changing glacier form and flow.

Figure 4 – Schematic overview of the various processes through which crevassed surfaces influence glacier mass balance relative to non-crevassed surfaces: (1) increased solar energy collection and enhanced surface ablation, (2) increased turbulent heat fluxes and enhanced surface ablation, (3) decreased buried crevasse air temperatures and suppressed ice deformation, (4) increased bulk glacier porosity and enhanced ablation area water retention, (5) increased supraglacial lake drainage and suppressed accumulation area water retention, (6) increased supraglacial lake drainage and enhanced ice deformation, (7) attenuated transmission of hydrologic variability (relative to moulins) and suppressed basal sliding velocities, (8) increased cryo-hydrologic warming of ice temperatures and enhanced ice deformation, (9) increased water content / hydraulic weakening and enhanced ice deformation, and (10) iceberg calving.

¹Colgan, W., H. Rajaram, W. Abdalati, C. McCutchan, R. Mottram, M. S. Moussavi and S. Grigsby. 2016. Glacier crevasses: Observations, models, and mass balance implications. Reviews of Geophysics. 54: doi:10.1002/
2015RG000504.

²Harper, J., N. Humphrey and W. Pfeffer. 1998. Crevasse patterns and the strain-rate tensor: A high-resolution comparison. Journal of Glaciology. 44: 68–76.

³Mellor, M. 1963. Oversnow Transport. Cold Regions Science and Engineering. Monograph III-A4. 104 pages.

Intro to our review paper on #glacier crevasses. https://t.co/7au4CCjaIf
(Published Feb 29 in Rev. Geophys.) pic.twitter.com/cXSFacETMT

— William Colgan (@GlacierBytes) March 1, 2016

We have a new study in the current issue of The Cryosphere that looks at the surface energy budget at a site on the Greenland Ice Sheet, and particularly the energy available for meltwater production, over a five-year period spanning the 2010 and 2012 exceptional melt years¹. While both the summers of 2010 and 2012 were exceptionally warm, only 2012 resulted in a negative mass balance. In fact, 2012 was the first year since records began that there was more meltwater runoff than snowfall at the site (KAN_U at 1840 m elevation in Southwest Greenland).

In the study we describe how the 2010 exceptional melt year appears to have preconditioned the near-surface layers of the ice sheet to dramatically strengthen the melt-albedo feedback in the subsequent 2012 exceptional melt year. Essentially, we suggest that near-surface ice lenses created by refreezing meltwater in the 2010 melt season made the ice sheet surface transition more readily from relatively high albedo light snow to relatively low albedo dark ice in the 2012 melt season. The substantially darker 2012 ice sheet surface absorbed more solar energy, and therefore caused more melt per ray of sunshine, than in 2010. We estimate that this melt-albedo feedback resulted in approximately 58 % more solar energy absorbed, and available for melt, in 2012 than in 2010.

While 2010 and 2012 were exceptional melt seasons in the context of the past thirty years, they are likely to have foreshadowed the upcoming thirty years. As Greenland climate is now rapidly warming, summer melt intensity no longer oscillates around its long term mean, and instead previously exceptional events are becoming normal. We therefore speculate that under persistent climate change, the firn at the KAN_U site will likely become saturated with refrozen ice lenses, which will enhance the melt-albedo feedback and perhaps even inhibit the downward percolation of meltwater. Ultimately, this will accelerate the transition of the contemporary lower accumulation area underlain by firn into an ablation area underlain by superimposed ice.

Maintaining the relatively sensitive automatic weather station needed to accurately measure surface energy fluxes in the relatively harsh ice sheet environment was no easy task. It took a number of scientists and funding agencies, which are listed in the acknowledgement section of the paper, to make this study possible. The KAN_U weather station continues to report real-time climate data via the Programme for Monitoring of the Greenland Ice Sheet (PROMICE) data portal: www.promice.dk.

Figure 1 – Monthly mean energy fluxes observed at KAN_U: shortwave (E_S), longwave (E_L), sensible heat (E_H), evaporative (E_E), geothermal (E_G), precipitation (E_P) and melt (E_M). The melt flux was calculated as a residual.

Figure 2 – A: Location of Kangerlussuaq Upper Station (KAN_U) on the Greenland Ice Sheet. B: The PROMICE climate station deployed to measure surface energy budget.

¹Charalampidis, C., D. van As, J. Box, M. van den Broeke, W. Colgan, S. Doyle, A. Hubbard, M. MacFerrin, H. Machguth and C. Smeets. 2015. Changing surface–atmosphere energy exchange and refreezing capacity of the lower accumulation area, West Greenland. The Cryosphere. 9: 2163-2181.

Quick intro to our study on the #Greenland ice sheet melt-albedo #climate #feedback: https://t.co/ecE2N3DbCZ pic.twitter.com/zFA32tTuJj

— William Colgan (@GlacierBytes) December 1, 2015

Jamieson and colleagues published a very neat investigation of the applied glaciology challenges at Kumtor Mine, Kyrgyzstan, this week in the AGU Journal of Geophysical Research: Earth Surface (open access here). The recovery of subglacial gold deposits at Kumtor Mine has necessitated the excavation of an open ice pit into the Lysii and Davidov Glaciers. In addition to excavating glacier overburden, a major geotechnical challenge at Kumtor Mine has been managing the flow of both glaciers. In their study, Jamieson et al. (2015) use a comprehensive set of high resolution satellite images to document recent artificial surges induced in both these glaciers in response to mining activities. Photos released by Radio Free Europe in 2013 suggest that these artificial surges quite adversely impacted mining operations (Figure 1).

Figure 1 – Infrastructure damage resulting from what is now a confirmed glacier advance at the Kumtor Mine in Kyrgyzstan (originally discussed in this earlier post)

The dumping of waste rock on both glaciers, in which waste rock piles reached up to 180 m thick, substantially increased the driving stress of the ice beneath. Given that ice deformation is related to driving stress to an exponent of three, and potentially higher exponents at higher driving stresses, this resulted in a significant increase in ice velocity. Jamieson et al. (2015) estimate that surface velocities of the Davidov Glacier increased from a few meters per year to several hundred meters per year within a decade. During this time, the Lysii and Davidov Glaciers advanced by 1.2 and 3.2 km, respectively, with Davidov Glacier terminus advance reaching 350 meters per year in c. 2012 (Figure “7”).

This study is probably the most textbook-comprehensive documentation of a human-induced artificial glacier surge to date, and will provide a great resource for my students to debate the sometimes fine line between geotechnical misstep and natural hazard!

Reference

(Jamieson, S., M. Ewertowski and D. Evans. 2015. Rapid advance of two mountain glaciers in response to mine-related debris loading. Journal of Geophysical Research: Earth Surface. 120: doi:10.1002/2015JF003504.

Quick blog on new study of human-induced 3.2 km #glacier surge at #Kumtor mine: http://t.co/mTYVeQDzcb pic.twitter.com/ONMkQETlRm

— William Colgan (@GlacierBytes) July 27, 2015

We have a new study in the AGU open access journal Earth’s Future this month, which introduces the notion of thermal-viscous collapse of the Greenland ice sheet¹. While people tend to think of ice as a solid, it is actually a non-Newtonian fluid, because it deforms and flows over longer time-scales. Of the many strange material properties of ice, the non-linear temperature dependence of its viscosity is especially notable; ice at 0 °C deforms almost ten times more than ice at -10 °C at the same stress. This temperature-dependent viscosity makes ice flow very sensitive to ice temperature. We know that the extra meltwater now being produced at the surface of the Greenland ice sheet, relative to 50 or 100 years ago, contains tremendous latent heat energy. So, in the study, we set out to see if the latent heat in future extra meltwater might have a significant impact on future ice sheet form and flow.

We first developed a conceptual model of what we called “thermal-viscous collapse”, which we define as the enhanced ice flow resulting from warming ice temperatures and subsequently softer ice viscosities. We decided there were three key processes necessary for initiating a thermal-viscous collapse: (1) sufficient energy available in future meltwater runoff, (2) routing of that extra meltwater to the ice-bed interface, and (3) efficient transfer of latent energy from meltwater to the ice. Drawing on previous model projections and observational process studies, and admittedly an injection of explicit speculation, we concluded that it is plausible to warm the deepest 15 % of the Greenland ice sheet, where the majority of deformation occurs, from characteristic Holocene temperatures to the melting-point in the next four centuries.

Figure 1 – Three key elements of thermal-viscous Greenland ice sheet collapse: (1) Sufficient energy available in projected Greenland meltwater runoff, (2) Routing of a fraction of meltwater to the interior ice-bed interface, and (3) Efficient energy transfer from meltwater to ice. This cross-sectional profile reflects mean observed Greenland ice surface and bedrock elevations between 74.1 and 76.4°N. Dashed lines illustrate stylized marine and land glacier termini.

We then used a simple (first-order Navier-Stokes) model of ice flow to simulate the effect of this warming and softening on the ice sheet over the next five centuries. We used a Monte Carlo approach, whereby we ran fifty simulations in which multiple key parameters were varied within their associated uncertainty. As may be expected, warming the deepest 15 % of the ice sheet by 8.8 °C, from characteristic Holocene temperatures to the melting-point, had a significant influence on ice sheet form and flow. Due to softer ice viscosities, the mean ice sheet surface velocity increased three fold, from 43 ± 4 m/yr to 126 ± 17 m/yr, resulting in an ice dynamic drawdown of the ice sheet, causing a 5 ± 2 % ice sheet volume reduction within 500 years. This is equivalent to a global mean sea-level rise contribution of 33 ± 18 cm (or just over one US foot). Of course, the vast majority of the sea level rise associated with thermal-viscous collapse would occur over subsequent millennia.

Figure 2 – Probability density time series of ensemble spread of 50 simulations in prescribed ice temperature (a), mean surface ice velocity (b), and ice volume (c), over a 200-year spin-up to transient equilibrium, and the subsequent 500-year combined transient forcing and spin-down period.

Perhaps a caveat or two: Just like simulating a marine instability induced collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet, our simulation of a thermal-viscous collapse of the Greenland ice sheet is an entirely hypothetical end-member scenario. It is admittedly difficult to interpret end-member assessments when their probability of occurrence is unknown. In our case, we did not attempt to constrain the probability of a thermal-viscous collapse of the Greenland ice sheet, we merely demonstrated that initiating a thermal-viscous collapse appears plausible within four centuries, and assessed the associated sea-level rise contribution. Additionally, it may be debatable whether the combination of crevasses and reverse drainage can indeed route meltwater throughout the ice sheet interior, but I suppose that is a debate worth having!

Reference

¹Colgan, W., A. Sommers, H. Rajaram, W. Abdalati, and J. Frahm. 2015. Considering thermal-viscous collapse of the Greenland ice sheet. Earth’s Future. 3. doi:10.1002/2015EF000301.

Blog intro to our new paper on "thermal-viscous collapse" of the #Greenland #ice sheet: http://t.co/Qw1PUzviHr pic.twitter.com/8GCLmeRHdZ

— William Colgan (@GlacierBytes) July 19, 2015