Science for Alaska: Across Seconds and Centuries: Tidewater Glacier Change in Alaska and Greenland

Presented by
Martin Truffer, Professor
Amy Jenson, Graduate Student Researcher
UAF Geophysical Institute

Throughout geologic time, Earth has witnessed the waxing and waning of continental-sized ice sheets. However, for the past several thousand years, it has had only two: the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets. In recent times, these ice sheets have been exposed to a rapidly warming climate and have experienced ice loss, a phenomenon once thought to occur only over hundreds or thousands of years.

In Greenland, rapid change occurs through outlet glaciers that drain the interior of the ice sheet into the surrounding ocean. Calving events shed large volumes of ice, sometimes exceeding that of a small Alaska glacier, tumbling into the ocean in a single instant. How these second-scale events are connected to the longer time evolution of the ice sheet is the subject of our research. To support our understanding of Greenland ice sheet dynamics, we rely on tidewater glacier observations in Alaska, which range from seasonal variations in ice flow to the complete disappearance of entire ice fields.

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