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Inland thinning on the Greenland ice sheet controlled by outlet glacier geometry

Nature Geoscience volume 10, pages 366–369 (2017)Cite this article

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Abstract

Greenland’s contribution to future sea-level rise remains uncertain and a wide range of upper and lower bounds has been proposed. These predictions depend strongly on how mass loss—which is focused at the termini of marine-terminating outlet glaciers—can penetrate inland to the ice-sheet interior. Previous studies have shown that, at regional scales, Greenland ice sheet mass loss is correlated with atmospheric and oceanic warming. However, mass loss within individual outlet glacier catchments exhibits unexplained heterogeneity, hindering our ability to project ice-sheet response to future environmental forcing. Using digital elevation model differencing, we spatially resolve the dynamic portion of surface elevation change from 1985 to present within 16 outlet glacier catchments in West Greenland, where significant heterogeneity in ice loss exists. We show that the up-glacier extent of thinning and, thus, mass loss, is limited by glacier geometry. We find that 94% of the total dynamic loss occurs between the terminus and the location where the down-glacier advective speed of a kinematic wave of thinning is at least three times larger than its diffusive speed. This empirical threshold enables the identification of glaciers that are not currently thinning but are most susceptible to future thinning in the coming decades.

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Figure 1: Dynamic surface elevation change and mass loss.
Figure 2: Centreline profile of Kangilernata Sermia (KAN).
Figure 3: Péclet number running maxima and percentage unit volume loss.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the Polar Geospatial Center for providing the WorldView stereo imagery. This work was funded by NASA Grant NNX12AP50G, by funding from the University of Texas Aerospace Engineering department, and a University of Texas Institute for Geophysics Postdoctoral Fellowship to T.C.B.

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Author notes

  1. Timothy C. Bartholomaus

    Present address: Present address: Department of Geological Sciences, University of Idaho, Moscow, Idaho 83844, USA.,

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Geophysics, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas 78758, USA

    Denis Felikson, Timothy C. Bartholomaus & Ginny A. Catania

  2. Department of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas 78705, USA

    Denis Felikson

  3. Department of Geological Sciences, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas 78705, USA

    Ginny A. Catania

  4. Nordic Volcanological Center, Institute of Earth Sciences, University of Iceland, IS-101 Reykjavik, Iceland

    Niels J. Korsgaard

  5. Centre for GeoGenetics, Natural History Museum, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen 1350, Denmark

    Kurt H. Kjær

  6. Department of Earth System Science, University of California, Irvine, California 92697, USA

    Mathieu Morlighem

  7. Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Research Utrecht, Utrecht University, 3584 CC Utrecht, The Netherlands

    Brice Noël & Michiel van den Broeke

  8. Department of Geology, University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas 66045, USA

    Leigh A. Stearns

  9. College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences, Oregon State University, Corvallis, Oregon 97331, USA

    Emily L. Shroyer & Jonathan D. Nash

  10. Department of Geological Sciences, University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon 97403, USA

    David A. Sutherland

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Contributions

D.F., T.C.B. and G.A.C. designed the study. D.F. created the WorldView DEMs, calculated catchment mass changes, and performed the kinematic wave analysis. D.F., T.C.B. and G.A.C. interpreted the results. N.J.K. and K.H.K. created the 1985 DEM. M.M. processed the mass-conserving bed for the study region. B.N. and M.v.d.B. provided downscaled SMB data. All authors discussed the results and commented on the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Denis Felikson.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Felikson, D., Bartholomaus, T., Catania, G. et al. Inland thinning on the Greenland ice sheet controlled by outlet glacier geometry. Nature Geosci 10, 366–369 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo2934

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