Open AccessCanadian Arctic glacier melt is accelerating and irreversible
Author(s) -
Schultz Colin
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
eos, transactions american geophysical union
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.316
H-Index - 86
eISSN - 2324-9250
pISSN - 0096-3941
DOI - 10.1002/2013eo180013
Subject(s) - glacier , meltwater , arctic , glacier ice accumulation , glacier mass balance , geology , glacier morphology , cryosphere , future sea level , tidewater glacier cycle , cirque glacier , physical geography , climatology , snow , ice stream , oceanography , sea ice , ice calving , geomorphology , geography , pregnancy , lactation , biology , genetics
Ongoing glacier loss in the Canadian high Arctic is accelerating and probably irreversible, new model projections by Lenaerts et al . suggest. The Canadian high Arctic is home to the largest clustering of glacier ice outside of Greenland and Antarctica—146,000 square kilometers of glacier ice spread across 36,000 islands. In the past few years, the mass of the glaciers in the Canadian Arctic archipelago has begun to plummet. Observations from NASA's Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellites suggest that from 2004 to 2011 the region's glaciers shed approximately 580 gigatons of ice. Aside from glacier calving, which plays only a small role in Canadian glacier mass loss, the drop is due largely to a shift in the surface mass balance, with warming‐induced meltwater runoff outpacing the accumulation of new snowfall.