Spatial and Temporal Variability of Winter Accumulation on Taku Glacier, Southeast Alaska, between 2012 and 2015

Abstract:

Glacier mass balance is an integral part of understanding a glacier’s health and dynamics. A key component of determining mass balance is winter accumulation which is traditionally estimated by digging and measuring snow densities from within snow pits. However, this method represents a labor-intensive point measurement which may not fully capture spatial variability of accumulation. To more efficiently estimate spatial variability of winter accumulation across Taku Glacier and its main tributaries in southeastern Alaska in 2015, we used a 400 MHz Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) Common Offset (CO) surveys along centerline transects which were also collected during a 2012 study. We used common midpoint (CMP) surveys, migration, snow pits, and probing to improve depth estimates and provide ground truth of winter accumulation depth measurements from CO surveys. We determined that the winter accumulation was significantly lower in 2015 than in 2012. However, gradients in accumulation versus elevation were consistent from year to year along centerline transects. We suggest that this low accumulation may be influencing the recent two year stall of Taku Glacier which has exhibited an advancing terminus for nearly a century. We recommend that further studies be conducted to extend the reach of this dataset beyond 2 years. This data would be invaluable to future models and mass balance studies on the Icefield and may capture key components that suggest a tipping point from advance to retreat of Taku Glacier.