C41E-06
What terrestrial glacial meltwater streams reveal about Greenland ice sheet hydrology
Thursday, 17 December 2015: 09:15
3007 (Moscone West)
Asa K Rennermalm1, Arno C Hammann2, Samiah Moustafa1, Laurence C Smith3, Lincoln H Pitcher3, Colin J Gleason3, Vena W. Chu4, Kang Yang3, Marco Tedesco5 and Dirk van As6, (1)Rutgers University New Brunswick, New Brunswick, NJ, United States, (2)Rutgers University, Piscataway, NJ, United States, (3)University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, United States, (4)University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, United States, (5)CUNY City College of New York, New York, NY, United States, (6)Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, Copenhagen, Denmark
Abstract:
Understanding of Greenland ice sheet hydrology can be advanced by better monitoring the discharge of terrestrial glacial meltwater streams. This is demonstrated with an ice sheet watershed study using a unique eight-year long record of pro-glacial discharge data from the Akuliarusiarsuup Kuua River in Southwest Greenland, as well as remote sensing of supraglacial hydrological features, and modeling of watershed runoff. We find strong interannual variability, extreme events, changing meltwater travel time through the melting season, and release of meltwater outside the regular melting season. This reveals that the ice sheet has a complex hydrological system that varies from year to year in response to external forcing and the development of hydrological pathways within and on the surface of the ice sheet.
