Will ice flow in land-terminating regions of the Greenland ice sheet accelerate under future climate warming?

Abstract:

Recent observations and modelling studies investigating the dynamic response of land-terminating regions of the Greenland ice sheet to a warmer climate remain at best unreconciled and at worst equivocal and contradictory. Some studies suggest that ice flow will be regulated over annual time scales by the development of efficient subglacial drainage. Others suggest that such self-regulation processes may not be effective at higher elevations and that the recent and projected expansion of supraglacial lakes further into the ice sheet interior has lead to increased ice flow at high elevations. On the other hand, the observation that rapid in situ supraglacial lake drainage events may be triggered by precursory basal motion have led to the argument that, by inference, such lake drainage in the interior may be impossible, or at least hindered, by reduced strain rates and lack of surface crevasses in these regions. The response of the Greenland ice sheet to a warmer, wetter climate, in which late summer and autumnal cyclonic weather events drive widespread melt, rainfall and transient accelerations may also need to be accounted for in assessments of future Greenland ice mass loss if predicted changes in Greenland’s climate are realised. This talk will critically assess recent insights gained into this topic, attempt to resolve some of them, and suggest directions for future research.