The surface energy balance (SEB) is essential for understanding the coupled cryosphere-atmosphere system in the Arctic. In this study, we investigate the spatiotemporal variability in SEB across tundra, snow and ice. During the snow-free period, the main energy sink for ice sites is surface melt. For tundra, energy is used for sensible and latent heat flux and soil heat flux leading to permafro...

[1] The drainage systems of polythermal glaciers play an important role in high-latitude hydrology, and are determinants of ice flow rate. Flow-recession analysis and linear-reservoir simulation of runoff time series are here used to evaluate seasonal and inter-annual variability in the drainage system of the polythermal Finsterwalderbreen, Svalbard, in 1999 and 2000. Linear-flow recessions are...

Understanding glacier motion is key to understanding how glaciers are growing, shrinking, and responding to changing environmental conditions. In situ observations are often difficult to collect and offer an analysis of glacier surface motion only at a few discrete points. Using light detection and ranging (LiDAR) data collected from surveys over six glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica, partic...

This paper reviews data on glacier mass balance together with extra metadata on topography and climate to put the data into context. The 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates of global average glacier mass balance may not be much different from simple averages. A more mathematically correct approach is to analyse long and continuous mass-balance series measured in diff...

The Susitna River draining from the highly glacierized Central Alaska Range has repeatedly been considered a potential hydro-power source in recent decades, raising questions about the effect of glacier changes on the basin’s river runoff. We determine changes in the glacier area (1951–2010), elevation (1951–2010, 1951–2005 and 2005–2010), equilibrium line altitude (ELA, 1999–2015), and accumul...

Using media with low water activity, a large numbers of aureobasidium-like black yeasts were isolated from glacial and subglacial ice of three polythermal glaciers from the coastal Arctic environment of Kongsfjorden (Svalbard, Spitsbergen), as well as from adjacent sea water, sea ice and glacial meltwaters. To characterise the genetic variability of Aureobasidium pullulans strains originating f...

A decrease in the mass and volume of Western Palmer Land has raised the prospect that ice speed has increased in this marine-based sector of Antarctica. To assess this possibility, we measure ice velocity over 25 years using satellite imagery and an optimized modeling approach. More than 30 unnamed outlet glaciers drain the 800 km coastline of Western Palmer Land at speeds ranging from 0.5 to 2...

Conventional and reference-surface mass-balance data from Gulkana and Wolverine Glaciers, Alaska, USA, are used to address the questions of how rapidly these glaciers are adjusting (or ‘responding’) to climate, whether their responses are stable, and whether the glaciers are likely to survive in today’s climate. Instability means that a glacier will eventually vanish, or at least become greatly...

Glaciers are interesting phenomena to scientists, mountaineers and tourists. Glaciers have a great impact on the local economy, power generation and water supply. Furthermore, the behaviour of glaciers is influenced by climate variations, such as changes in temperature. Monitoring glaciers can therefore give valuable insight to glaciologists. Two aspects of glaciers that can be monitored are th...

Images of melting glaciers dominate the pictorial language of climate change, powerful symbols of a fragile earth at risk from the impacts of climate change (Figure 1). The environmental campaign group Greenpeace has been instrumental in documenting these impacts through film and photography. Since 1997, Greenpeace has led expeditions to the Arctic and Antarctic in order to observe and record c...