Abstract
Majority areas of Antarctica and Greenland are under the thick ice sheet and characterized by evolving cryosphere surroundings. In the polar region, associated with the recent trend on climate change such as global warming, glacier relating earthquakes are increasing during this 21st century. In this paper, a decade of progress in “Cryoseismology” at bi-polar regions is re-viewed by focusing on the contribution from Japanese researchers. In particular, the specific cryoseismic events are treated, which occurred in the coastal area of East Antarctica, around the Lutzow-Holm Bay, together with the coast and whole inland area of Greenland. As the major scientific results, frequency-overtone signals in the harmonic cryoseismic tremors were analyzed by assuming constant sources, suggesting inter-glacial asperities that generate characteristic tremors. Infrasound source locations were also determined by using the array deployment at the coastal regions in the Antarctic. In contrast, characteristics of glacial earthquakes and seismic interferometry approach have been conducted so as to achieve the fine structure of the Greenland Ice Sheet (GrIS) in particular the basal condition beneath the ice sheet.
Highlights
The majority of the land of Antarctica and Greenland are buried by thick ice-sheet and surrounded by evolving cryosphere in their surface environment
Besides the dynamic processes of calving events and basal melting for individual glaciers in relating to glacial earthquakes, another seismic activity occurs associated with the uplift of crystalline solid Earth (GIA relating events) involving regional/local deglaciation
A significant number of ice-quakes were excited (i.e., “dynamic triggering”) beneath the ice sheet of West Antarctic continent and West Antarctic Rift System (WARS) by using teleseismic surface waves triggered by large deep earthquakes occurred in South America [45] [46]
Summary
The majority of the land of Antarctica and Greenland are buried by thick ice-sheet and surrounded by evolving cryosphere in their surface environment. There is no strict definition in the usage of these specific terminologies expressing the cryoseismic phenomenon Such the cryoseismic sources are defined by several categories in their occurrence dynamics; the ice-sheets, ice-caps, glaciers and ice-streams, icebergs and sea-ices, tide-relating cracks and their calving fronts [3] [6] [7] [8] [9]. “ice-quakes” recorded in the Antarctic region could be excited by the energy of several phenomena in surface layers of the Earth, coupled with the ocean-atmosphere-cryosphere-solid earth system ([11], Figure 1) In these characteristics having multi-generic aspects, seismological research for cryosphere (including those who are making studies on wave propagation characteristics, reconstruction of source mechanism, in addition to seismicity) are so-called “Cryoseismology”; which has been known as a new branch of geosciences by inter-disciplinary approaches collaborating with other geoscience branches of geophysics, geodesy, and glaciology. The new findings and technology involving the studies on “glacial earthquakes” could give rise to new insights into an understanding of ongoing dynamics of the cryosphere, as well as underlying crystalized Earth’s crust and upper mantle
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