A decade of winter supraglacial lake drainage across Northeast Greenland using C-band SAR

Dean, Connor Wolfgang; Scharien, Randall; Willis, Ian; McDougall, Kali Ann

doi:10.5194/tc-20-1559-2026

Articles | Volume 20, issue 3

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-20-1559-2026

© Author(s) 2026. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-20-1559-2026

© Author(s) 2026. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 20, issue 3

Research article

|

16 Mar 2026

Research article |

| 16 Mar 2026

A decade of winter supraglacial lake drainage across Northeast Greenland using C-band SAR

Connor Wolfgang Dean, Randall Scharien, Ian Willis, and Kali Ann McDougall

Data sets

Supraglacial lake winter drainages in Northeast Greenland (2014/15–2023/24) from C-band SAR (v1.0) Connor Wolfgang Dean et al. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18765554

IceBridge BedMachine Greenland (IDBMG4, Version 5) M. Morlighem et al. https://doi.org/10.5067/GMEVBWFLWA7X

MEaSUREs Greenland Ice Mapping Project (GIMP) Land Ice and Ocean Classification Mask (NSIDC-0714, Version 1) I. Howat https://doi.org/10.5067/B8X58MQBFUPA

Glacier catchments/basins for the Greenland Ice Sheet J. Mouginot and E. Rignot https://doi.org/10.7280/D1WT11

MEaSUREs Multi-year Greenland Ice Sheet Velocity Mosaic (NSIDC-0670, Version 1) I. Joughin et al. https://doi.org/10.5067/QUA5Q9SVMSJG

MEaSUREs Greenland 6 and 12 day Ice Sheet Velocity Mosaics from SAR. (NSIDC-0766, Version 2) I. Joughin https://doi.org/10.5067/1AMEDB6VJ1NZ

MEaSUREs Greenland Monthly Ice Sheet Velocity Mosaics from SAR and Landsat (NSIDC-0731, Version 5) I. Joughin https://doi.org/10.5067/EGKZX6FXXM4P

Short summary

In this study we track winter supraglacial lake drainage on the Greenland Ice Sheet. Winter drainage is hard to observe, so we used synthetic aperture radar images to build a method that detects events across ten winter seasons. We find drainage occurs every winter, often in cascades, is most common at lower elevations, and indicates clear links to summer drainage and melt conditions. Winter drainage seldom drives seasonal changes in ice speed, though brief increases can follow cascade events.