1 1 Title 2 A New Year’s Day Icebreaker: Icequakes on Lakes in Alberta, Canada 3 Authors 4 Jeffrey Kavanaugh1 5 *Ryan Schultz2 6 Laurence Andriashek2 7 Mirko van der Baan1 8 Hadi Ghofrani3 9 Gail Atkinson3 10 Daniel J. Utting2 11 12 1 University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta 13 2 Alberta Geological Survey, Edmonton, Alberta 14 3 Western University, London, Ontario 15 *Corresponding Author:
[email protected] 16 17 Accepted in the Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences 18 doi: 10.1139/cjes-2018-0196. 19 2 20 Abstract 21 Any process that causes a sudden brittle failure of material has the potential to cause 22 earthquake-like seismic events. Cryoseisms represent an underreported class of seismic event 23 due to their (often) small magnitudes. In this paper, we document the phenomenon of some of 24 the largest magnitude lake-associated icequakes (ML 2.0) yet reported. These events occurred 25 nearly simultaneously (within ~2 hours) on geographically separate lakes in Alberta, Canada 26 starting January 1 2018. We conjecture that these events were caused by the sudden brittle 27 failure of lake ice due to thermal expansion; the effects of the thermal expansion were 28 compounded by the lack of insulating snow cover, high lake water levels, and a rapid onset of 29 atmospheric warming. These factors also contributed to ice-jacking – a repeating process in 30 which thermal contraction produces tensile cracks (leads) in lake ice that are then filled with 31 water that is frozen during the cooling cycle. Thus, any subsequent thermal expansion must be 32 accommodated by new deformation or brittle failure.