Crevasse density, orientation and temporal variability at Narsap Sermia, Greenland.

Abstract

Mass loss from iceberg calving at marine-terminating glaciers is one of the largest and most poorly constrained contributors to sea-level rise. However, our understanding of the processes controlling ice fracturing and crevasse evolution is incomplete. Here, we use Gabor filter banks to automatically map crevasse density and orientation through time on a ~150 km2 terminus region of Narsap Sermia, an outlet glacier of the southwest Greenland ice sheet. We find that Narsap Sermia is dominated by transverse (flow-perpendicular) crevasses near the ice front and longitudinal (flow-aligned) crevasses across its central region. Measured crevasse orientation varies on sub-annual timescales by more than 45 in response to seasonal velocity changes, and also on multi-annual timescales in response to broader dynamic changes and glacier retreat. Our results show a gradual up-glacier propagation of the zone of flow-transverse crevassing coincident with frontal retreat and acceleration occurring in 2020/21, in addition to sub-annual crevasse changes primarily in transition zones between longitudinal to transverse crevasse orientation. This provides new insight into the dynamics of crevassing at large marine-terminating glaciers and a potential approach for the rapid identification of glacier dynamic change from a single pair of satellite images.