Atmospheric forcing of rapid marine-terminating glacier retreat in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago

Cook, A.J.; Copland, L.; Noel, B.P.Y.; Stokes, C.R.; Bentley, M.J.; Sharp, M.J.; Bingham, R.G.; van den Broeke, M.R.

doi:10.1126/sciadv.aau8507

Atmospheric forcing of rapid marine-terminating glacier retreat in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago

Cook, A.J.; Copland, L.; Noel, B.P.Y.; Stokes, C.R.; Bentley, M.J.; Sharp, M.J.; Bingham, R.G.; van den Broeke, M.R.

Authors

A.J. Cook

L. Copland

B.P.Y. Noel

Professor Chris Stokes c.r.stokes@durham.ac.uk
Professor

Professor Michael Bentley m.j.bentley@durham.ac.uk
Professor

M.J. Sharp

R.G. Bingham

M.R. van den Broeke

Abstract

The Canadian Arctic Archipelago contains >300 glaciers that terminate in the ocean, but little is known about changes in their frontal positions in response to recent changes in the ocean-climate system. Here, we examine changes in glacier frontal positions since the 1950s and investigate the relative influence of oceanic temperature versus atmospheric temperature. Over 94% of glaciers retreated between 1958 and 2015, with a region-wide trend of gradual retreat before ~2000, followed by a fivefold increase in retreat rates up to 2015. Retreat patterns show no correlation with changes in subsurface ocean temperatures, in clear contrast to the dominance of ocean forcing in western Greenland and elsewhere. Rather, significant correlations with surface melt indicate that increased atmospheric temperature has been the primary driver of the acceleration in marine-terminating glacier frontal retreat in this region.

Citation

Cook, A., Copland, L., Noel, B., Stokes, C., Bentley, M., Sharp, M., …van den Broeke, M. (2019). Atmospheric forcing of rapid marine-terminating glacier retreat in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Science Advances, 5(3), Article eaau8507. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aau8507

Journal Article Type	Article
Acceptance Date	Jan 29, 2019
Online Publication Date	Mar 13, 2019
Publication Date	Mar 13, 2019
Deposit Date	Mar 21, 2019
Publicly Available Date	Mar 21, 2019
Journal	Science Advances
Publisher	American Association for the Advancement of Science
Peer Reviewed	Peer Reviewed
Volume	5
Issue	3
Article Number	eaau8507
DOI	https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aau8507

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Copyright © 2019 The Authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of Science. No claim to original U.S. Government Works. Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial License 4.0 (CC BY-NC).
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