Surface melt driven behaviour in soft bedded glaciers

Hart, Jane and Martinez, Kirk (2018) Surface melt driven behaviour in soft bedded glaciers. American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2018: AGU 100, , Washington, United States. 10 - 14 Dec 2018.

Record type: Conference or Workshop Item (Other)

Abstract

Recent research has suggested that increased melting associated with climate change may not necessarily lead to increased glacier velocities and accelerated melt, because the glacier adapts its subglacial hydrology to accommodate this additional melt. However the majority of studies have focused on hard bedded glaciers, particularly from Greenland. In contrast, the ice streams of Antarctica (and parts of the Quaternary ice sheets) are underlain by a soft bed, which have a different subglacial hydrology and potentially a different dynamic response.
We present an instrumented data set (from unique in situ wireless probes, GPR, geophones and dGPS over a period of five years) from an Icelandic temperate soft bedded glacier, to study the effect of increased surface melting on the behaviour of glaciers with unconsolidated beds. We use this data to investigate water pathways through the ice and the till in order to understand a multi-year seasonal response to surface melt, and to determine to what degree does water pressure variation moderate ice flow.

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