Articles | Volume 16, issue 3
https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-16-807-2022
https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-16-807-2022
Research article
 | 
10 Mar 2022
Research article |  | 10 Mar 2022

Multi-decadal retreat of marine-terminating outlet glaciers in northwest and central-west Greenland

Taryn E. Black and Ian Joughin

Data sets

MEaSUREs Greenland Image Mosaics from Sentinel-1A and 1B, Version 4 I. Joughin https://doi.org/10.5067/WXQ366CP8YDE

Merged Hadley-OI sea surface temperature and sea ice concentration data set Dennis Shea, Jim Hurrell, and Adam Phillips https://doi.org/10.5065/r33v-sv91

Model code and software

v1.0 Taryn E. Black https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6015419

Download
Short summary
We used satellite images to create a comprehensive record of annual glacier change in northwest Greenland from 1972 through 2021. We found that nearly all glaciers in our study area have retreated and glacier retreat accelerated from around 1996. Comparing these results with climate data, we found that glacier retreat is most sensitive to water runoff and moderately sensitive to ocean temperatures. These can affect glacier fronts in several ways, so no process clearly dominates glacier retreat.