High geothermal heat flow, Basal melt, and the origin of rapid ice flow in central Greenland.

نویسندگان

  • M Fahnestock
  • W Abdalati
  • I Joughin
  • J Brozena
  • P Gogineni
چکیده

Age-depth relations from internal layering reveal a large region of rapid basal melting in Greenland. Melt is localized at the onset of rapid ice flow in the large ice stream that drains north off the summit dome and other areas in the northeast quadrant of the ice sheet. Locally, high melt rates indicate geothermal fluxes 15 to 30 times continental background. The southern limit of melt coincides with magnetic anomalies and topography that suggest a volcanic origin.

برای دانلود متن کامل این مقاله و بیش از 32 میلیون مقاله دیگر ابتدا ثبت نام کنید

ثبت نام

اگر عضو سایت هستید لطفا وارد حساب کاربری خود شوید

منابع مشابه

Detailed Spatially Distributed Geothermal Heat-flow Data for Modeling of Basal Temperatures and Meltwater Production Beneath the Fennoscandian Ice Sheet

Accurate modeling of ice sheets requires proper information on boundary conditions, including the geothermal heat flow (or heat-flow density (HFD)). Traditionally, one uniform HFD value is adopted for the entire modeled domain. We have calculated a distributed, high-resolution HFD dataset for an approximate core area (Sweden and Finland) of the Scandinavian ice sheet, and imbedded this within l...

متن کامل

Dependence of century-scale projections of the Greenland ice sheet on its thermal regime

Observations show that the Greenland ice sheet has been losing mass at an increasing rate over the past few decades, which makes it a major contributor to sea-level rise. Here we use a threedimensional higher-order ice-flow model, adaptive mesh refinement and inverse methods to accurately reproduce the present-day ice flow of the Greenland ice sheet. We investigate the effect of the ice thermal...

متن کامل

Winter motion mediates dynamic response of the Greenland Ice Sheet to warmer summers

[1] We present ice velocities from a land-terminating transect extending >115 km into the western Greenland Ice Sheet during three contrasting melt years (2009–2011) to determine whether enhanced melting accelerates dynamic mass loss. We find no significant correlation between surface melt and annual ice flow. There is however a positive correlation between melt and summer ice displacement, but...

متن کامل

Surface melt-induced acceleration of Greenland ice-sheet flow.

Ice flow at a location in the equilibrium zone of the west-central Greenland Ice Sheet accelerates above the midwinter average rate during periods of summer melting. The near coincidence of the ice acceleration with the duration of surface melting, followed by deceleration after the melting ceases, indicates that glacial sliding is enhanced by rapid migration of surface meltwater to the ice-bed...

متن کامل

Seismic evidence for complex sedimentary control of Greenland Ice Sheet flow

The land-terminating margin of the Greenland Ice Sheet has slowed down in recent decades, although the causes and implications for future ice flow are unclear. Explained originally by a self-regulating mechanism where basal slip reduces as drainage evolves from low to high efficiency, recent numerical modeling invokes a sedimentary control of ice sheet flow as an alternative hypothesis. Althoug...

متن کامل

ذخیره در منابع من


  با ذخیره ی این منبع در منابع من، دسترسی به آن را برای استفاده های بعدی آسان تر کنید

برای دانلود متن کامل این مقاله و بیش از 32 میلیون مقاله دیگر ابتدا ثبت نام کنید

ثبت نام

اگر عضو سایت هستید لطفا وارد حساب کاربری خود شوید

عنوان ژورنال:
  • Science

دوره 294 5550  شماره 

صفحات  -

تاریخ انتشار 2001