Gulf of Alaska ice-marginal lake area change over the Landsat record and potential physical controls

Field, Hannah R.; Armstrong, William H.; Huss, Matthias

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-15-3255-2021

Articles | Volume 15, issue 7

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-15-3255-2021

© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-15-3255-2021

© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 15, issue 7

Research article

|

15 Jul 2021

Research article |

| 15 Jul 2021

Gulf of Alaska ice-marginal lake area change over the Landsat record and potential physical controls

Hannah R. Field, William H. Armstrong, and Matthias Huss

Supplement

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-15-3255-2021-supplement

Data sets

Greater Gulf of Alaska ice-marginal lake perimeters over 1984-2018 Hannah Field and William Armstrong https://doi.org/10.18739/A27659G66

A consensus estimate for the ice thickness distribution of all glaciers on Earth D. Farinotti, M. Huss, J. J. Fürst, J. M. Landmann, H. Machguth, F. Maussion, and A. Pandit https://doi.org/10.3929/ethz-b-000315707

Short summary

The growth of a glacier lake alters the hydrology, ecology, and glaciology of its surrounding region. We investigate modern glacier lake area change across northwestern North America using repeat satellite imagery. Broadly, we find that lakes downstream from glaciers grew, while lakes dammed by glaciers shrunk. Our results suggest that the shape of the landscape surrounding a glacier lake plays a larger role in determining how quickly a lake changes than climatic or glaciologic factors.