Ice shelves are critical features in the debate about West Antarctic ice sheet change and sea level rise, both because they limit ice discharge and because they are sensitive to change in the surrounding ocean. The Pine Island Glacier ice shelf has been thinning rapidly since at least the early 1990s, which has caused its trunk to accelerate and retreat. Although the ice shelf front has remained stable for the past six decades, past periods of ice shelf collapse have been inferred from relict seabed corrugations (corrugated ridges), preserved 340km from the glacier in Pine Island Trough. Here we present high-resolution bathymetry gathered by an autonomous underwater vehicle operating beneath an Antarctic ice shelf, which provides evidence of long-term change in Pine Island Glacier. Corrugations and ploughmarks on a sub-ice shelf ridge that was a former grounding line closely resemble those observed offshore, interpreted previously as the result of iceberg grounding. The same interpretation here would indicate a significantly reduced ice shelf extent within the last 11kyr, implying Holocene glacier retreat beyond present limits, or a past tidewater glacier regime different from today. The alternative, that corrugations were not formed in open water, would question ice shelf collapse events interpreted from the geological record, revealing detail of another bed-shaping process occurring at glacier margins. We assess hypotheses for corrugation formation and suggest periodic grounding of ice shelf keels during glacier unpinning as a viable origin. This interpretation requires neither loss of the ice shelf nor glacier retreat and is consistent with a stable grounding-line configuration throughout the Holocene.

Recent evidence has shown increasing mass loss from the Greenland ice sheet, with a general trend of accelerated mass losses extending northwards. However, different glaciers have been shown to respond differently to similar external forcings, constituting a problem for extrapolating and upscaling data. Specifically, whilst some outlet glaciers have accelerated, thinned, and retreated in response to atmospheric and oceanic warming, the behavior of other marine terminating glaciers appears to be less sensitive to climate forcing. Ryder glacier, for which only a few studies have been conducted, is located in North Greenland and terminates with a floating ice tongue in Sherard Osborn Fjord. The persistence or disintegration of floating ice tongues has impacts on glacier dynamics and stability, with ramifications beyond, including sea level rise. This study focuses on understanding the controls on calving and frontal ablation of the Ryder glacier through the use of time-lapse imagery and satellite data. The results suggest that Ryder glacier has behaved independently of climate forcing during recent decades, with fjord geometry exerting a first order control on its calving.

Geophysical mapping and coring of the central Arctic Ocean seafloor provide evidence for repeated occurrences of ice sheet/ice shelf complexes during previous glacial periods. Several ridges and bathymetric highs shallower than present water depths of approximate to 1000m show signs of erosion from deep-drafting (armadas of) icebergs, which originated from thick outlet glaciers and ice shelves. Mapped glacigenic landforms and dates of cored sediments suggest that the largest ice shelf complex was confined to the Amerasian sector of the Arctic Ocean during Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 6. However, the spatial extent of ice shelves can not be well reconstructed from occasional groundings on bathymetric highs. Therefore, we apply a statistical approach to provide independent support for an extensive MIS 6 ice shelf complex, which previously was inferred only from interpretation of geophysical and geological data. Specifically, we assess whether this ice shelf complex comprises a likely source of the deep-draft icebergs responsible for the mapped scour marks. The statistical modeling is based on exploiting relations between contemporary Antarctic ice shelves and their local physical environments and the assumption that Arctic Ocean MIS6 ice shelves scale similarly. Analyzing ice thickness data along the calving front of contemporary ice shelves, a peak over threshold method is applied to determine sources of deep-drafting icebergs in the Arctic Ocean MIS6 ice shelf complex. This approach is novel to modeling Arctic paleoglacial configurations. Predicted extreme calving front drafts match observed deep-draft iceberg scours if the ice shelf complex is sufficiently large.

This paper presents new methods of estimating the aerodynamic roughness (z0) of glacier ice directly from three-dimensional point clouds and digital elevation models (DEMs), examines temporal variability of z0, and presents the first fully distributed map of z0 estimates across the ablation zone of an Arctic glacier. The aerodynamic roughness of glacier ice surfaces is an important component of energy balance models and meltwater runoff estimates through its influence on turbulent fluxes of latent and sensible heat. In a warming climate these fluxes are predicted to become more significant in contributing to overall melt volumes. Ice z0 is commonly estimated from measurements of ice surface microtopography, typically from topographic profiles taken perpendicular to the prevailing wind direction. Recent advances in surveying permit rapid acquisition of high-resolution topographic data allowing revision of assumptions underlying conventional z0 measurement. Using Structure from Motion (SfM) photogrammetry with Multi-View Stereo (MVS) to survey ice surfaces with millimeter-scale accuracy, z0 variation over 3 orders of magnitude was observed. Different surface types demonstrated different temporal trajectories in z0 through 3 days of intense melt. A glacier-scale 2 m resolution DEM was obtained through terrestrial laser scanning (TLS), and subgrid roughness was significantly related to plot-scale z0. Thus, we show for the first time that glacier-scale TLS or SfM-MVS surveys can characterize z0 variability over a glacier surface potentially leading to distributed representations of z0 in surface energy balance models.

We present an inverse modeling approach to reconstruct annual accumulation patterns from ground-penetrating radar (GPR) data. A coupled surface energy balance-snow model simulates surface melt and the evolution of subsurface density, temperature, and water content. The inverse problem consists of iteratively calibrating accumulation, serving as input for the model, by finding a match between modeled and observed radar travel times. The inverse method is applied to a 16km GPR transect on Nordenskioldbreen, Svalbard, yielding annual accumulation patterns for 2007-2012. Accumulation patterns with a mean of 0.75meter water equivalent (mwe)a(-1)contain substantial spatial variability, with a mean annual standard deviation of 0.17mwea(-1), and show only partial consistency from year to year. In contrast to traditional methods, accounting for melt water percolation, refreezing, and runoff facilitates accurate accumulation reconstruction in areas with substantial melt. Additionally, accounting for horizontal density variability along the transect is shown to reduce spatial variability in reconstructed accumulation, whereas incorporating irreducible water storage lowers accumulation estimates. Correlating accumulation to terrain characteristics in the dominant wind direction indicates a strong preference of snow deposition on leeward slopes, whereas weaker correlations are found with terrain curvature. Sensitivity experiments reveal a nonlinear response of the mass balance to accumulation changes. The related negative impact of small-scale accumulation variability on the mean net mass balance is quantified, yielding a negligible impact in the accumulation zone and a negative impact of -0.09mwea(-1)in the ablation area.