Subaqueous melting of Store Glacier, west Greenland from three‐dimensional, high‐resolution numerical modeling and ocean observations

By Yun Xu, Eric J. M. Rignot, Ian G. Fenty, Dimitris Menemenlis, Mar M. Flexas. Geophysical Research Letters, 2013

193 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We present three‐dimensional, high‐resolution simulations of ice melting at the calving face of Store Glacier, a tidewater glacier in West Greenland, using the Massachusetts Institute of Technology general circulation model. We compare the simulated ice melt with an estimate derived from oceanographic data. The simulations show turbulent upwelling and spreading of the freshwater‐laden plume along the ice face and the vigorous melting of ice at rates of meters per day. The simulated August 2010 melt rate of 2.0±0.3 m/d is within uncertainties of the melt rate of 3.0±1.0 m/d calculated from oceanographic data. Melting is greatest at depth, above the subglacial channels, causing glacier undercutting. Melt rates increase proportionally to thermal forcing raised to the power of 1.2–1.6 and to subglacial water flux raised to the power of 0.5–0.9. Therefore, in a warmer climate, Store Glacier melting by ocean may increase from both increased ocean temperature and subglacial discharge.

Subfields: Atmospheric Science, Pulmonary and Respiratory Medicine

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/4fb1fb3a57809df3b3bab8e8c6e8fb14b828ea6b

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Citations in the corpus

Resolving and Parameterising the Ocean Mesoscale in Earth System Models (2020, background): “Explicit representation of processes at tide water glacier fronts requires very high horizontal and vertical resolution (O(1)m) [147] due to the typical size of the buoyant plumes generated by the subglacial runoff.”
Modeling the impact of glacial runoff on fjord circulation and submarine melt rate using a new subgrid-scale parameterization for glacial plumes (2015, methodology): “To date, it has been used in several studies of glacial ice-ocean interaction both beneath Antarctic ice shelves [Heimbach and Losch, 2012; Losch, 2008] and in Greenland’s fjords [Sciascia et al., 2014, 2013; Xu et al., 2013, 2012].”
BedMachine v3: Complete Bed Topography and Ocean Bathymetry Mapping of Greenland From Multibeam Echo Sounding Combined With Mass Conservation (2017, background): “When AW reaches glacier termini, calving fronts are exposed to strong ocean-induced melt, which may be enhanced by subglacial discharge (Bendtsen et al., 2015; Xu et al., 2013).”