Abstract
AbstractRecent work has highlighted the sensitivity of marine-terminating glaciers to decadal-scale changes in the ocean–climate system in parts of East Antarctica. However, compared to Greenland, West Antarctica and the Antarctic Peninsula, little is known about recent glacier change and potential cause(s), with several regions yet to be studied in detail. In this paper, we map the terminus positions of 135 glaciers along the coastline of Victoria Land, Oates Land and George V Land from 1972–2013 at a higher temporal resolution (sub-decadal intervals) than in previous research. These three regions span a range of climatic and oceanic conditions and contain a variety of glacier types. Overall, from 1972–2013, 36% of glaciers advanced, 25% retreated and the remainder showed no discernible change. On sub-decadal timescales, there were no clear trends in glacier terminus position change. However, marine-terminating glaciers experienced larger terminus position changes compared with terrestrial glaciers, and those with an unconstrained floating tongue exhibited the largest variations. We conclude that, unlike in Greenland, West Antarctica and the Antarctic Peninsula, there is no clear glacier retreat in the study area and that most of the variations are more closely linked to glacier size and terminus type.
Highlights
Recent observations have shown that mass loss from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets has accelerated over the last few decades (Joughin & Alley 2011, Rignot et al 2011b, McMillan et al 2014)
Results show that unlike in the vast majority of mountain glacier regions and extensive marginal areas of the Greenland ice sheet (GrIS) and West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS), we find no obvious trend of glacier retreat in Victoria Land, Oates Land and George V Land between 1972 and 2013
There were no trends in Victoria Land, but we identified a significant switch from a period of glacier retreat to a period of glacier advance from the 1972–88 epoch to the 1988–97 epoch in both Oates Land and George V Land, which we tentatively link with increased sea ice concentrations, but which requires further testing
Summary
Recent observations have shown that mass loss from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets has accelerated over the last few decades (Joughin & Alley 2011, Rignot et al 2011b, McMillan et al 2014). A significant portion of this mass is lost via marine-terminating outlet glaciers (Rignot et al 2013, Joughin et al 2014), which have undergone rapid thinning, acceleration and retreat (Moon & Joughin 2008, Pritchard et al 2009, Carr et al 2013b) These changes have been linked to warming trends in air and ocean temperatures (Pritchard et al 2009, 2012, Joughin & Alley 2011), raising concerns about the future stability of the GrIS and WAIS (Pritchard et al 2009, Joughin et al 2014) and their contribution to global sea level rise, which is currently estimated to be 0.59 ± 0.20 mm yr-1 (Shepherd et al 2012). Mass balance estimates for the EAIS show considerable variation (Zwally et al 2005, Rignot et al 2011b, Shepherd et al 2012, McMillan et al 2014)
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