Articles | Volume 15, issue 3
https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-15-1645-2021
© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-15-1645-2021
© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Understanding drivers of glacier-length variability over the last millennium
Alan Huston
College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR, USA
Nicholas Siler
CORRESPONDING AUTHOR
College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR, USA
Gerard H. Roe
Department of Earth and Space Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA
Erin Pettit
College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR, USA
Nathan J. Steiger
Institute of Earth Sciences, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel
Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University, Palisades, NY, USA
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Christian T. Wild, Tasha Snow, Tiago S. Dotto, Peter E. D. Davis, Scott Tyler, Ted A. Scambos, Erin C. Pettit, and Karen J. Heywood
EGUsphere, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-1675, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-1675, 2025
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Thwaites Glacier is retreating due to warm ocean water melting it from below, but its thick ice shelf makes this heat hard to monitor. Using hot water drilling, we placed sensors beneath the floating ice, revealing how surface freezing in Pine Island Bay influences heat at depth. Alongside gradual warming, we found bursts of heat that could speed up melting at the grounding zone, which may become more common as sea ice declines.
Daniel R. Otto, Gerard H. Roe, and John Erich Christian
EGUsphere, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2024-3309, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2024-3309, 2024
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Glaciers respond slowly to changes in climate, meaning that they are not yet adjusted to the present-day level of warming. Using a simple model, we find that the median Alaskan glacier has undergone only 27 % of the retreat necessary to equilibrate to the current climate. Our findings hold even when accounting for large uncertainties, suggesting that substantial retreat is inevitable even if future warming slows or stabilizes.
Mathurin A. Choblet, Janica C. Bühler, Valdir F. Novello, Nathan J. Steiger, and Kira Rehfeld
Clim. Past, 20, 2117–2141, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-20-2117-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-20-2117-2024, 2024
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Past climate reconstructions are essential for understanding climate mechanisms and drivers. Our focus is on the South American continent over the past 2000 years. We offer a new reconstruction that particularly utilizes data from speleothems, previously absent from continent-wide reconstructions. We use paleoclimate data assimilation, a reconstruction method that combines information from climate archives and climate simulations.
Gabriela Collao-Barrios, Ted A. Scambos, Christian T. Wild, Martin Truffer, Karen E. Alley, and Erin C. Pettit
EGUsphere, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2024-1895, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2024-1895, 2024
Preprint archived
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Destabilization of ice shelves frequently leads to significant acceleration and greater mass loss, affecting rates of sea level rise. Our results show a relation between tides, flow direction, and grounding-zone acceleration that result from changing stresses in the ice margins and around a nunatak in Dotson Ice Shelf. The study describes a new way tides can influence ice shelf dynamics, an effect that could become more common as ice shelves thin and weaken around Antarctica.
Naomi E. Ochwat, Ted A. Scambos, Alison F. Banwell, Robert S. Anderson, Michelle L. Maclennan, Ghislain Picard, Julia A. Shates, Sebastian Marinsek, Liliana Margonari, Martin Truffer, and Erin C. Pettit
The Cryosphere, 18, 1709–1731, https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-18-1709-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-18-1709-2024, 2024
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On the Antarctic Peninsula, there is a small bay that had sea ice fastened to the shoreline (
fast ice) for over a decade. The fast ice stabilized the glaciers that fed into the ocean. In January 2022, the fast ice broke away. Using satellite data we found that this was because of low sea ice concentrations and a high long-period ocean wave swell. We find that the glaciers have responded to this event by thinning, speeding up, and retreating by breaking off lots of icebergs at remarkable rates.
Jenna A. Epifanio, Edward J. Brook, Christo Buizert, Erin C. Pettit, Jon S. Edwards, John M. Fegyveresi, Todd A. Sowers, Jeffrey P. Severinghaus, and Emma C. Kahle
The Cryosphere, 17, 4837–4851, https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-17-4837-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-17-4837-2023, 2023
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The total air content (TAC) of polar ice cores has long been considered a potential proxy for past ice sheet elevation. This study presents a high-resolution record of TAC from the South Pole ice core. The record reveals orbital- and millennial-scale variability that cannot be explained by elevation changes. The orbital- and millennial-scale changes are likely a product of firn grain metamorphism near the surface of the ice sheet, due to summer insolation changes or local accumulation changes.
Andrew A. Margason, Alison M. Anders, Robert J. C. Conrick, and Gerard H. Roe
Earth Surf. Dynam., 11, 849–863, https://doi.org/10.5194/esurf-11-849-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/esurf-11-849-2023, 2023
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We examine differences in glacier extent in the Olympic Mountains, USA, where modern precipitation in east-facing valleys is only 50 % of that in west-facing valleys. During the Last Glacial Period, there were very small glaciers in the east and very large glaciers in the west. We use climate data and glacier models to show that the modern spatial pattern of precipitation is likely to have been similar during the past glaciation and may be sufficient to explain the asymmetry of glacier extent.
Michelle L. Maclennan, Jan T. M. Lenaerts, Christine A. Shields, Andrew O. Hoffman, Nander Wever, Megan Thompson-Munson, Andrew C. Winters, Erin C. Pettit, Theodore A. Scambos, and Jonathan D. Wille
The Cryosphere, 17, 865–881, https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-17-865-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-17-865-2023, 2023
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Atmospheric rivers are air masses that transport large amounts of moisture and heat towards the poles. Here, we use a combination of weather observations and models to quantify the amount of snowfall caused by atmospheric rivers in West Antarctica which is about 10 % of the total snowfall each year. We then examine a unique event that occurred in early February 2020, when three atmospheric rivers made landfall over West Antarctica in rapid succession, leading to heavy snowfall and surface melt.
Michael P. Erb, Nicholas P. McKay, Nathan Steiger, Sylvia Dee, Chris Hancock, Ruza F. Ivanovic, Lauren J. Gregoire, and Paul Valdes
Clim. Past, 18, 2599–2629, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-18-2599-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-18-2599-2022, 2022
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To look at climate over the past 12 000 years, we reconstruct spatial temperature using natural climate archives and information from model simulations. Our results show mild global mean warmth around 6000 years ago, which differs somewhat from past reconstructions. Undiagnosed seasonal biases in the data could explain some of the observed temperature change, but this still would not explain the large difference between many reconstructions and climate models over this period.
Douglas I. Benn, Adrian Luckman, Jan A. Åström, Anna J. Crawford, Stephen L. Cornford, Suzanne L. Bevan, Thomas Zwinger, Rupert Gladstone, Karen Alley, Erin Pettit, and Jeremy Bassis
The Cryosphere, 16, 2545–2564, https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-16-2545-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-16-2545-2022, 2022
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Thwaites Glacier (TG), in West Antarctica, is potentially unstable and may contribute significantly to sea-level rise as global warming continues. Using satellite data, we show that Thwaites Eastern Ice Shelf, the largest remaining floating extension of TG, has started to accelerate as it fragments along a shear zone. Computer modelling does not indicate that fragmentation will lead to imminent glacier collapse, but it is clear that major, rapid, and unpredictable changes are underway.
Christian T. Wild, Karen E. Alley, Atsuhiro Muto, Martin Truffer, Ted A. Scambos, and Erin C. Pettit
The Cryosphere, 16, 397–417, https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-16-397-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-16-397-2022, 2022
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Thwaites Glacier has the potential to significantly raise Antarctica's contribution to global sea-level rise by the end of this century. Here, we use satellite measurements of surface elevation to show that its floating part is close to losing contact with an underwater ridge that currently acts to stabilize. We then use computer models of ice flow to simulate the predicted unpinning, which show that accelerated ice discharge into the ocean follows the breakup of the floating part.
Karen E. Alley, Christian T. Wild, Adrian Luckman, Ted A. Scambos, Martin Truffer, Erin C. Pettit, Atsuhiro Muto, Bruce Wallin, Marin Klinger, Tyler Sutterley, Sarah F. Child, Cyrus Hulen, Jan T. M. Lenaerts, Michelle Maclennan, Eric Keenan, and Devon Dunmire
The Cryosphere, 15, 5187–5203, https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-15-5187-2021, https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-15-5187-2021, 2021
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We present a 20-year, satellite-based record of velocity and thickness change on the Thwaites Eastern Ice Shelf (TEIS), the largest remaining floating extension of Thwaites Glacier (TG). TG holds the single greatest control on sea-level rise over the next few centuries, so it is important to understand changes on the TEIS, which controls much of TG's flow into the ocean. Our results suggest that the TEIS is progressively destabilizing and is likely to disintegrate over the next few decades.
Ross Maguire, Nicholas Schmerr, Erin Pettit, Kiya Riverman, Christyna Gardner, Daniella N. DellaGiustina, Brad Avenson, Natalie Wagner, Angela G. Marusiak, Namrah Habib, Juliette I. Broadbeck, Veronica J. Bray, and Samuel H. Bailey
The Cryosphere, 15, 3279–3291, https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-15-3279-2021, https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-15-3279-2021, 2021
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In the last decade, airborne radar surveys have revealed the presence of lakes below the Greenland ice sheet. However, little is known about their properties, including their depth and the volume of water they store. We performed a ground-based geophysics survey in northwestern Greenland and, for the first time, were able to image the depth of a subglacial lake and estimate its volume. Our findings have implications for the thermal state and stability of the ice sheet in northwest Greenland.
Gerard H. Roe, John Erich Christian, and Ben Marzeion
The Cryosphere, 15, 1889–1905, https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-15-1889-2021, https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-15-1889-2021, 2021
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The worldwide retreat of mountain glaciers and consequent loss of ice mass is one of the most obvious signs of a changing climate and has significant implications for the hydrology and natural hazards in mountain landscapes. Consistent with our understanding of the human role in temperature change, we demonstrate that the central estimate of the size of the human-caused mass loss is essentially 100 % of the observed loss. This assessment resolves some important inconsistencies in the literature.
Gordon N. Inglis, Fran Bragg, Natalie J. Burls, Marlow Julius Cramwinckel, David Evans, Gavin L. Foster, Matthew Huber, Daniel J. Lunt, Nicholas Siler, Sebastian Steinig, Jessica E. Tierney, Richard Wilkinson, Eleni Anagnostou, Agatha M. de Boer, Tom Dunkley Jones, Kirsty M. Edgar, Christopher J. Hollis, David K. Hutchinson, and Richard D. Pancost
Clim. Past, 16, 1953–1968, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-16-1953-2020, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-16-1953-2020, 2020
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This paper presents estimates of global mean surface temperatures and climate sensitivity during the early Paleogene (∼57–48 Ma). We employ a multi-method experimental approach and show that i) global mean surface temperatures range between 27 and 32°C and that ii) estimates of
bulkequilibrium climate sensitivity (∼3 to 4.5°C) fall within the range predicted by the IPCC AR5 Report. This work improves our understanding of two key climate metrics during the early Paleogene.
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Short summary
We simulate the past 1000 years of glacier length variability using a simple glacier model and an ensemble of global climate model simulations. Glaciers with long response times are more likely to record global climate changes caused by events like volcanic eruptions and greenhouse gas emissions, while glaciers with short response times are more likely to record natural variability. This difference stems from differences in the frequency spectra of natural and forced temperature variability.
We simulate the past 1000 years of glacier length variability using a simple glacier model and...