21st century response of Petermann Glacier, northwest Greenland to ice shelf loss

Hill, E.A.; Gudmundsson, G.H.; Carr, J.R.; Stokes, C.R.; King, H.M.

doi:10.1017/jog.2020.97

21st century response of Petermann Glacier, northwest Greenland to ice shelf loss

Hill, E.A.; Gudmundsson, G.H.; Carr, J.R.; Stokes, C.R.; King, H.M.

Authors

E.A. Hill

G.H. Gudmundsson

J.R. Carr

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

H.M. King

Abstract

Ice shelves restrain flow from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets. Climate-ocean warming could force thinning or collapse of floating ice shelves and subsequently accelerate flow, increase ice discharge and raise global mean sea levels. Petermann Glacier (PG), northwest Greenland, recently lost large sections of its ice shelf, but its response to total ice shelf loss in the future remains uncertain. Here, we use the ice flow model Úa to assess the sensitivity of PG to changes in ice shelf extent, and to estimate the resultant loss of grounded ice and contribution to sea level rise. Our results have shown that under several scenarios of ice shelf thinning and retreat, removal of the shelf will not contribute substantially to global mean sea level (<1 mm). We hypothesize that grounded ice loss was limited by the stabilization of the grounding line at a topographic high ~12 km inland of its current grounding line position. Further inland, the likelihood of a narrow fjord that slopes seawards suggests that PG is likely to remain insensitive to terminus changes in the near future.

Citation

Hill, E., Gudmundsson, G., Carr, J., Stokes, C., & King, H. (2021). 21st century response of Petermann Glacier, northwest Greenland to ice shelf loss. Journal of Glaciology, 67(261), 147-157. https://doi.org/10.1017/jog.2020.97

Journal Article Type	Article
Acceptance Date	Oct 5, 2020
Online Publication Date	Dec 2, 2020
Publication Date	2021-02
Deposit Date	Nov 5, 2020
Publicly Available Date	Jun 3, 2021
Journal	Journal of Glaciology
Print ISSN	0022-1430
Electronic ISSN	1727-5652
Publisher	International Glaciological Society
Peer Reviewed	Peer Reviewed
Volume	67
Issue	261
Pages	147-157
DOI	https://doi.org/10.1017/jog.2020.97

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Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.