C51C-0749
Taku Glacier Dynamics in Response to Regional Climate Variability and Predicted Change
Friday, 18 December 2015
Poster Hall (Moscone South)
Sydney Le Cras, California Polytechnic State University San Luis Obispo, San Luis Obispo, CA, United States, James Headen, Elizabeth City State University, Elizabeth City, NC, United States, Elisabeth Marshall, Colorado College, Colorado Springs, CO, United States, James O'Neil, University of Maine, Orono, ME, United States, Laurel Rand-Lewis, Harvard-Westlake High School, Los Angeles, CA, United States, Isabel Suhr, Lewis & Clark College, Portland, OR, United States and Kiya L Riverman, Organization Not Listed, Washington, DC, United States
Abstract:
Glaciers vary spatially on decadal and centennial timescales in response to noise and forcing, whether natural or anthropogenic. At 1477 meters thick, the Taku glacier, located in Southeast Alaska on the Juneau Icefield, is the deepest and thickest temperate glacier in the world. The purpose of this study is to compare the effects of regional climate noise on the Taku glacier with anthropogenic forcing over the span of 200 years through the use of a 1-d finite difference shallow ice approximation model developed by the 2015 Juneau Icefield Research Program Taku Modeling Team (JIRP.TMT). Climate predictions from the IPCC are used in the forced simulation and will be compared to the modeling of regional noise. The results of this investigation will allow us to determine the glacier’s sensitivity to regional weather noise relative to anticipated climate change.
