Substantial ice loss has occurred in the Russian High Arctic during the past decade, predominantly on Novaya Zemlya, yet the region has been studied relatively little. Consequently, the factors forcing mass loss and the relative contribution of ice dynamics versus surface melt are poorly understood. Here we evaluate the influence of atmospheric/oceanic forcing and variations in fjord width on t...

Assessments of the state of health of Hindu-Kush–Karakoram– Himalaya glaciers and their contribution to regional hydrology and global sea-level rise suffer from a severe lack of observations1. The globally averaged mass balance of glaciers and ice caps is negative1–3. An anomalous gain of mass has been suggested for the Karakoram glaciers2,4–6, but was not confirmed by recent estimates of mass ...

Seasonal waves accompanying annual changes in the sliding velocity of ice travel down glacier at speeds much faster than the ice itself. A simple explanation for these waves in terms of the passage of a pressure wave through the subglacial drainage system is given. Drainage by both distributed and localized systems is explored, with the sliding velocity governed by a dependence on the effective...

This paper by Lawson and coworkers reports very interesting results with regard to low molecular weight DOC (LMW-DOC) speciation and abundance in basal ice from glaciers that have different organic and lithological substrates and thermal regimes. The case is made that these LMW-DOC compounds may support and/or be a product of biogeochemical activity beneath glaciers with consequence to regional...

Citation: Seehaus TC, Marinsek S, Skvarca P, van Wessem JM, Reijmer CH, Seco JL and Braun MH (2016) Dynamic Response of Sjögren Inlet Glaciers, Antarctic Peninsula, to Ice Shelf Breakup Derived from Multi-Mission Remote Sensing Time Series. Front. Earth Sci. 4:66. doi: 10.3389/feart.2016.00066 Dynamic Response of Sjögren Inlet Glaciers, Antarctic Peninsula, to Ice Shelf Breakup Derived from Mul...

Mt Kenya, located at the Earth's equator, is one of the few tropical mountain areas in the world where glaciers exist today. Two i ce cores to a depth o f 1 3.4 and 11.4 m were retrieved from the col (4870 m) between the Lewis and Gregory glaciers. Microparticle, oxygen isotope and total S radioactivity analyses were conducted. The results of these measurements, as well as those from other trop...

This paper presents some applications of the Maximum Likelihood (ML) texture tracking on displacement estimation of some alpine and antarctic glaciers surfaces. This method is adapted to the statistical characteristic of the new High Resolution (HR) Polarimetric SAR (PolSAR) data. The ML texture tracking method is firstly reminded and a statistical model of HR PolSAR data is explained. The main...

Greenland ice cores reveal that mean annual temperatures during the Younger Dryas (YD) cold interval--about 12.9 to 11.7 thousand years ago (ka)--and the ~150-year-long cold reversal that occurred 8.2 thousand years ago were ~15° and 3° to 4°C colder than today, respectively. Reconstructing ice-sheet response to these climate perturbations can help evaluate ice-sheet sensitivity to climate chan...

Aim Climate projections for the upcoming decades predict a significant loss of ice mass particularly critical glaciers in tropical mountains. In dry landscapes southern Andes (from Southern Peru to Chile), this global trend has strong ecological impacts on high-altitude wetlands that support unique avifauna feeding, roosting and nesting. As glacier runoffs are expected affect area quality wetla...