Over-winter persistence of supraglacial lakes on the Greenland Ice Sheet: results and insights from a new model

Details

• Journal Title:
  Journal of Glaciology
• Personal Author:
  Law, Robert ; Arnold, Neil ; Benedek, Corinne ; Tedesco, Marco ; Banwell, Alison ; Willis, Ian
• NOAA Program & Office:
  CIRES (Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences)
• Description:
  We present a newly developed 1-D numerical energy-balance and phase transition supraglacial lake model: GlacierLake. GlacierLake incorporates snowfall, in situ snow and ice melt, incoming water from the surrounding catchment, ice lid formation, basal freeze-up and thermal stratification. Snow cover and temperature are varied to test lake development through winter and the maximum lid thickness is recorded. Average wintertime temperatures of −2 to and total snowfall of 0 to 3.45 m lead to a range of the maximum lid thickness from 1.2 to 2.8 m after days, with snow cover exerting the dominant control. An initial ice temperature of with simulated advection of cold ice from upstream results in 0.6 m of basal freeze-up. This suggests that lakes with water depths above 1.3 to 3.4 m (dependent on winter snowfall and temperature) upon lid formation will persist through winter. These buried lakes can provide a sizeable water store at the start of the melt season, expedite future lake formation and warm underlying ice even in winter.
• Keywords:
  Glacier Hydrology Melt-surface Modelling Glacier Hydrology
• Source:
  Journal of Glaciology, 66(257), 362-372
• DOI:
  https://doi.org/10.1017/jog.2020.7
• Document Type:
  Journal Article
• Rights Information:
  CC BY
• Compliance:
  Submitted
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha256:0f667e804e71ba1d6772629676da532a1090f96f92004a4de271c4948b764086
• Download URL:
  https://repository.library.noaa.gov/view/noaa/31901/noaa_31901_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 1.54 MB ]