i
Journey of an Arctic Ice Island
-
2016
Source: Oceanography 29(2):254–263
[PDF-1.62 MB]
Details:
-
Journal Title:Oceanography
-
Personal Author:
-
NOAA Program & Office:
-
Description:In August 2010, a 253 km2 ice island calved from the floating glacial tongue of Petermann Glacier in Northwest Greenland. Petermann Ice Island (PII)-B, a large fragment of this original ice island, is the most intensively observed ice island in recent decades. We chronicle PII-B’s deterioration over four years while it drifted more than 2,400 km south along Canada’s eastern Arctic coast, investigate the ice island’s interactions with surrounding ocean waters, and report on its substantial seafloor scour. Three-dimensional sidewall scans of PII-B taken while it was grounded 130 km southeast of Clyde River, Nunavut, show that prolonged wave erosion at the waterline during sea ice-free conditions created a large underwater protrusion. The resulting buoyancy forces caused a 100 m × 1 km calving event, which was recorded by two GPS units. A field team observed surface waters to be warmer and fresher on the side of PII-B where the calving occurred, which perhaps led to the accelerated growth of the protrusion. PII-B produced up to 3.8 gigatonnes (3.8 × 1012 kg) of ice fragments, known hazards to the shipping and resource extraction industries, monitored over 22 months. Ice island seafloor scour, such as a 850 m long, 3 m deep trench at PII-B’s grounding location, also puts subseafloor installations (e.g., pipelines) at risk. This long-term and interdisciplinary assessment of PII-B is the first such study in the eastern Canadian Arctic and captures the multiple implications and risks that ice islands impose on the natural environment and offshore industries.
-
Source:Oceanography 29(2):254–263
-
Document Type:
-
Place as Subject:
-
Rights Information:CC BY
-
Compliance:Submitted
-
Main Document Checksum:urn:sha256:36eeb6e11f1b7be9864d9f42fee673bf4e8fe9d3a40a944c3d588f50cee8d84a
-
File Type:
Supporting Files
-
No Additional Files
More +
Related Documents
-
Personal Author:Fu, Hongli ;Wu, Xinrong...2016 | Advances in Meteorology,2016: 2170746Description:Extracting multiple-scale observational information is critical for accurately reconstructing the structure of mesoscale circulation systems such as t...Drivers and uncertainties of future global marine primary production in marine ecosystem modelsCitePersonal Author:Laufkötter, C. ;Vogt, M....2015 | Biogeosciences, 12, 6955–6984, 2015Description:Past model studies have projected a global decrease in marine net primary production (NPP) over the 21st century, but these studies focused on the mul...Personal Author:Murakami, Hiroyuki ;Vecchi, Gabriel A....2016 | Journal of Climate, 28(23), 9058-9079Description:A new high-resolution Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL) coupled model [the High-Resolution Forecast-Oriented Low Ocean Resolution (FLOR) mo...Personal Author:Muñoz, Á. G. ;Goddard, L....2016 | Journal of Climate, 29(16), 5915-5934Description:Potential and real predictive skill of the frequency of extreme rainfall in southeastern South America for the December–February season are evaluate...Personal Author:Jia, Liwei ;Vecchi, Gabriel A....2016 | Journal of Climate, 29(11), 4121-4135Description:This study investigates the roles of radiative forcing, sea surface temperatures (SSTs), and atmospheric and land initial conditions in the summer war...Personal Author:Hiester, J. ;Sergienko, O. V....2016 | J. Geophys. Res. Earth Surf., 121, 497– 510Description:Satellite laser altimetry reveals short timescale changes in Antarctic ice sheet surface elevation that are suggested to be driven by subglacial water...Personal Author:Stern, A. A. ;Adcroft, A....2016 | J. Geophys. Res. Oceans, 121, 5773– 5788Description:Icebergs calved from the Antarctic continent act as moving sources of freshwater while drifting in the Southern Ocean. The lifespan of these icebergs ...Climate variability and extremes, interacting with nitrogen storage, amplify eutrophication riskCitePersonal Author:Lee, Minjin ;Shevliakova, Elena...2016 | Geophys. Res. Lett., 43, 7520– 7528Description:Despite 30 years of basin-wide nutrient-reduction efforts, severe hypoxia continues to be observed in the Chesapeake Bay. Here we demonstrate the cr...Personal Author:Yang, Xiaosong ;Vecchi, G. A....2015 | Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 96(12), S25-S28.Description:Over the period Decem-ber 2013–February 2014, there was a pronounced reduction of extratropical storm (ETS) activity over the North Pacific Ocean an...2020 | Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems, 12, e2019MS002043.Description:This contribution describes the ocean biogeochemical component of the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory's Earth System Model 4.1 (GFDL‐ESM4.1), ...2020 | Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems, 12, e2019MS002032.Description:We describe the baseline model configuration and simulation characteristics of the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL)'s Atmosphere Model ver...Personal Author:Ilotoviz, Eyal ;Khain, Alexander P....2016 | Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences, 73(1), 109-144Description:A midlatitude hail storm was simulated using a new version of the spectral bin microphysics Hebrew University Cloud Model (HUCM) with a detailed descr...Personal Author:Banerjee, Tirtha ;Li, Dan...2016 | Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences, 73(1), 145-166Description:A spectral budget model is developed to describe the scaling behavior of the longitudinal turbulent velocity variance with the stability parameter and...2020 | Geophysical Research Letters 47(5): e2019GL086765, 2020Description:We examine links between tropical Pacific mean state biases and El Niño/Southern Oscillation forecast skill, using model‐analog hindcasts of sea su...2021 | Journal of Climate, 34(6), 2107-2126.Description:The current GFDL seasonal prediction system achieved retrospective sea ice extent (SIE) skill without direct sea ice data assimilation. Here we develo...Personal Author:Zhang, Liping ;Delworth, Thomas L.2016 | J. Geophys. Res. Oceans, 121, 5825– 5846Description:The impact of Antarctic bottom water (AABW) formation on the Weddell Gyre and its northward propagation characteristics are studied using a 4000 year ...Personal Author:Kam, Jonghun ;Knutson, Thomas R....2015 | Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 96(12), S61-S65.Description:HadCRUT4v3 observed surface tem-perature data (Morice et al. 2012) indicate that during 2014, record annual mean warm anomalies occurred in regions of...Personal Author:Williams, Dean N. ;Balaji, V....2016 | Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 97(5), 803-816.Description:Working across U.S. federal agencies, international agencies, and multiple worldwide data centers, and spanning seven international network organizati...Personal Author:Mellor, George2016 | J. Geophys. Res. Oceans, 121, 4474– 4486Description:The classic theory for the interaction of surface gravity waves and the general ocean circulation entails the so-called wave radiation stress terms in...
More +
You May Also Like
2020 | Remote Sens. 2020, 12(10), 1582
Description:
This work assesses the AMSR2 (the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer 2) ice extent and ice edge in the Arctic using the ice extent products of NOA...
2020 | Remote Sensing, 12(5), 807
Description:
Arctic sea ice extent has been utilized to monitor sea ice changes since the late 1970s using remotely sensed sea ice data derived from passive microw...
Checkout today's featured content at repository.library.noaa.gov