Supraglacial debris thickness variability: impact on ablation and relation to terrain properties

Nicholson, Lindsey I.; McCarthy, Michael; Pritchard, Hamish D.; Willis, Ian

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-12-3719-2018

Articles | Volume 12, issue 12

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-12-3719-2018

© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-12-3719-2018

© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 12, issue 12

Research article

|

29 Nov 2018

Research article |

| 29 Nov 2018

Supraglacial debris thickness variability: impact on ablation and relation to terrain properties

Lindsey I. Nicholson, Michael McCarthy, Hamish D. Pritchard, and Ian Willis

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Final revised paper (published on 29 Nov 2018)
Preprint (discussion started on 06 Jun 2018)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

AC: Author comment | RC: Referee comment | SC: Short comment | EC: Editor comment

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- Supplement

RC1: 'Comments on Nicholson et al', Peter Moore, 15 Jun 2018
- AC1: 'Response to review by P. Moore', Lindsey Nicholson, 07 Sep 2018
RC2: 'Comment on 'Supraglacial debris thickness variability...' by Nicholson et al.', Anonymous Referee #2, 12 Jul 2018
- AC2: 'Response to review by Anonomous Referee', Lindsey Nicholson, 07 Sep 2018

Peer-review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision

AR by Lindsey Nicholson on behalf of the Authors (08 Oct 2018)

ED: Publish as is (06 Nov 2018) by Valentina Radic

AR by Lindsey Nicholson on behalf of the Authors (15 Nov 2018)

Short summary

Ground-penetrating radar of supraglacial debris thickness is used to study local thickness variability. Freshly emergent debris cover appears to have higher skewness and kurtosis than more mature debris covers. Accounting for debris thickness variability in ablation models can result in markedly different ice ablation than is calculated using the mean debris thickness. Slope stability modelling reveals likely locations for locally thin debris with high ablation.