TY - JOUR
T1 - Changes in glacier dynamics in the northern Antarctic Peninsula since 1985
AU - Seehaus, Thorsten
AU - Cook, Alison J.
AU - Silva, Aline B.
AU - Braun, Matthias
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© Author(s) 2018.
The author was not affilated to SAMS at the time of publication
Funding Information:
Acknowledgements. This work was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) in the framework of the priority programme “Antarctic Research with comparative investigations in Arctic ice areas” by a grant to Matthias Braun (BR 2105/9-1). Matthias Braun and Thorsten Seehaus would like to thank the HGF Alliance “Remote Sensing of Earth System Dynamics” (HA-310) and Marie-Curie-Network International Research Staff Exchange Scheme IMCONet (EU FP7-PEOPLE-2012-IRSES) for additional support. Access to satellite data was kindly provided by various space agencies, e.g., under ESA AO 4032, DLR TerraSAR-X Background Mission Antarctic Peninsula and Ice Shelves, TSX AO LAN0013, TanDEM-X Mission TDX AO XTI_GLAC0264, ASF, GLIMS as well as NASA and USGS.
PY - 2018/2/20
Y1 - 2018/2/20
N2 - The climatic conditions along the northern Antarctic Peninsula have shown significant changes within the last 50 years. Here we present a comprehensive analysis of temporally and spatially detailed observations of the changes in ice dynamics along both the east and west coastlines of the northern Antarctic Peninsula. Temporal evolutions of glacier area (1985-2015) and ice surface velocity (1992-2014) are derived from a broad multi-mission remote sensing database for 74 glacier basins on the northern Antarctic Peninsula ( < 65° S along the west coast and north of the Seal Nunataks on the east coast). A recession of the glaciers by 238.81 km2 is found for the period 1985-2015, of which the glaciers affected by ice shelf disintegration showed the largest retreat by 208.59 km2. Glaciers on the east coast north of the former Prince Gustav Ice Shelf extent in 1986 receded by only 21.07 km2 (1985-2015) and decelerated by about 58 % on average (1992-2014). A dramatic acceleration after ice shelf disintegration with a subsequent deceleration is observed at most former ice shelf tributaries on the east coast, combined with a significant frontal retreat. In 2014, the flow speed of the former ice shelf tributaries was 26 % higher than before 1996. Along the west coast the average flow speeds of the glaciers increased by 41 %. However, the glaciers on the western Antarctic Peninsula revealed a strong spatial variability of the changes in ice dynamics. By applying a hierarchical cluster analysis, we show that this is associated with the geometric parameters of the individual glacier basins (hypsometric indexes, maximum surface elevation of the basin, flux gate to catchment size ratio). The heterogeneous spatial pattern of ice dynamic evolutions at the northern Antarctic Peninsula shows that temporally and spatially detailed observations as well as further monitoring are necessary to fully understand glacier change in regions with such strong topographic and climatic variances.
AB - The climatic conditions along the northern Antarctic Peninsula have shown significant changes within the last 50 years. Here we present a comprehensive analysis of temporally and spatially detailed observations of the changes in ice dynamics along both the east and west coastlines of the northern Antarctic Peninsula. Temporal evolutions of glacier area (1985-2015) and ice surface velocity (1992-2014) are derived from a broad multi-mission remote sensing database for 74 glacier basins on the northern Antarctic Peninsula ( < 65° S along the west coast and north of the Seal Nunataks on the east coast). A recession of the glaciers by 238.81 km2 is found for the period 1985-2015, of which the glaciers affected by ice shelf disintegration showed the largest retreat by 208.59 km2. Glaciers on the east coast north of the former Prince Gustav Ice Shelf extent in 1986 receded by only 21.07 km2 (1985-2015) and decelerated by about 58 % on average (1992-2014). A dramatic acceleration after ice shelf disintegration with a subsequent deceleration is observed at most former ice shelf tributaries on the east coast, combined with a significant frontal retreat. In 2014, the flow speed of the former ice shelf tributaries was 26 % higher than before 1996. Along the west coast the average flow speeds of the glaciers increased by 41 %. However, the glaciers on the western Antarctic Peninsula revealed a strong spatial variability of the changes in ice dynamics. By applying a hierarchical cluster analysis, we show that this is associated with the geometric parameters of the individual glacier basins (hypsometric indexes, maximum surface elevation of the basin, flux gate to catchment size ratio). The heterogeneous spatial pattern of ice dynamic evolutions at the northern Antarctic Peninsula shows that temporally and spatially detailed observations as well as further monitoring are necessary to fully understand glacier change in regions with such strong topographic and climatic variances.
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U2 - 10.5194/tc-12-577-2018
DO - 10.5194/tc-12-577-2018
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85042376472
SN - 1994-0416
VL - 12
SP - 577
EP - 594
JO - Cryosphere
JF - Cryosphere
IS - 2
ER -