Premium
Après Nous, le Déluge: A Human‐Triggered Jökulhlaup From a Subglacial Lake
Author(s) -
Gaidos E.,
Jóhannesson T.,
Einarsson B.,
Thorsteinsson Th.,
Amend J. P.,
Skidmore M.
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
geophysical research letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.007
H-Index - 273
eISSN - 1944-8007
pISSN - 0094-8276
DOI - 10.1029/2020gl089876
Subject(s) - geology , glacier , borehole , geomorphology , glacial lake , hydrology (agriculture) , natural (archaeology) , glacial period , permafrost , oceanography , paleontology , geotechnical engineering
Glacial floods (jökulhlaups) are a phenomenon of some temperate ice masses; they are a significant natural hazard, but their complex hydrology is incompletely understood. We document a jökulhlaup from a subglacial lake in Iceland that was inadvertently triggered by a borehole drilled through the overlying ice. We propose that this borehole allowed an englacial water body to drain into the lake, inducing a transient rise in pressure that overwhelmed the lake's subglacial seal 5 days later. Runaway melting of a subglacial conduit by 4°C lake water then initiated a flood to the outlet glacier margin. This incident suggests that draining of englacial water bodies via hydrofracturing crevasses and flooding of moulins by precipitation events are potential natural triggers of jökulhlaups and explains a correlation between surface melting and jökulhlaups. This hydraulic trigger could have wider implications for relations between meteorological conditions, drainage, and dynamics of some glaciers.