Coupled Modelling of Subglacial Hydrology and Calving-Front Melting at Store Glacier, West Greenland
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Edinburgh Research Explorer Coupled modelling of subglacial hydrology and calving-front melting at Store Glacier, West Greenland Citation for published version: Cook, SJ, Christoffersen, P, Todd, J, Slater, D & Chauché, N 2020, 'Coupled modelling of subglacial hydrology and calving-front melting at Store Glacier, West Greenland', Cryosphere, vol. 14, no. 3, pp. 905- 924. https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-14-905-2020 Digital Object Identifier (DOI): 10.5194/tc-14-905-2020 Link: Link to publication record in Edinburgh Research Explorer Document Version: Publisher's PDF, also known as Version of record Published In: Cryosphere Publisher Rights Statement: © Author(s) 2020. General rights Copyright for the publications made accessible via the Edinburgh Research Explorer is retained by the author(s) and / or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing these publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. Take down policy The University of Edinburgh has made every reasonable effort to ensure that Edinburgh Research Explorer content complies with UK legislation. If you believe that the public display of this file breaches copyright please contact [email protected] providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 06. Oct. 2021 The Cryosphere, 14, 905–924, 2020 https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-14-905-2020 © Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. Coupled modelling of subglacial hydrology and calving-front melting at Store Glacier, West Greenland Samuel J. Cook1, Poul Christoffersen1, Joe Todd2, Donald Slater3, and Nolwenn Chauché4 1Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK 2Department of Geography and Sustainable Development, University of St Andrews, St Andrews, UK 3Scripps Institution of Oceanography, La Jolla, USA 4Access Arctic, Le Vieux Marigny 58160, Sauvigny-les-Bois, France Correspondence: Samuel J. Cook ([email protected]) Received: 8 May 2019 – Discussion started: 3 June 2019 Revised: 20 December 2019 – Accepted: 13 February 2020 – Published: 11 March 2020 Abstract. We investigate the subglacial hydrology of Store larger. This has implications for the future velocity and mass Glacier in West Greenland, using the open-source, full- loss of Store Glacier, and the consequent sea-level rise, in a Stokes model Elmer/Ice in a novel 3D application that in- warming world. cludes a distributed water sheet, as well as discrete chan- nelised drainage, and a 1D model to simulate submarine plumes at the calving front. At first, we produce a base- line winter scenario with no surface meltwater. We then in- 1 Introduction vestigate the hydrological system during summer, focussing specifically on 2012 and 2017, which provide examples The Greenland Ice Sheet (GrIS) is currently losing mass at −1 of high and low surface-meltwater inputs, respectively. We about 260 Gt a (Forsberg et al., 2017) and this rate has been show that the common assumption of zero winter freshwater accelerating (Kjeldsen et al., 2015). Around half of this loss flux is invalid, and we find channels over 1 m2 in area occur- is tied to ice-sheet dynamics (van den Broeke et al., 2016) ring up to 5 km inland in winter. We also find that the produc- and the accompanying flow acceleration is partly due to tide- tion of water from friction and geothermal heat is sufficiently water outlet glaciers, which drain 88 % of the ice sheet (Rig- high to drive year-round plume activity, with ice-front melt- not and Mouginot, 2012). As such, understanding how these ing averaging 0.15 m d−1. When the model is forced with tidewater glaciers may change over time is crucial to our abil- seasonally averaged surface melt from summer, we show a ity to predict the likely evolution of the GrIS in a warming hydrological system with significant distributed sheet activ- climate. ity extending 65 and 45 km inland in 2012 and 2017, respec- One area of particular concern is the subglacial hydrol- tively; while channels with a cross-sectional area higher than ogy of these tidewater glaciers. Whilst there have been 1 m2 form as far as 55 and 30 km inland. Using daily values many studies focusing on the subglacial hydrology of land- for the surface melt as forcing, we find only a weak rela- terminating portions of the GrIS and its complex effect on the tionship between the input of surface meltwater and the in- flow of the overlying ice (Chandler et al., 2013; de Fleurian et tensity of plume melting at the calving front, whereas there al., 2016; Christoffersen et al., 2018; Gagliardini and Werder, is a strong correlation between surface-meltwater peaks and 2018; Meierbachtol et al., 2013; Sole et al., 2013; Tedstone basal water pressures. The former shows that storage of water et al., 2013, 2015; van de Wal et al., 2015), the hydrology on multiple timescales within the subglacial drainage system of tidewater glaciers has received much less attention (e.g. plays an important role in modulating subglacial discharge. Schild et al., 2016; Sole et al., 2011; Vallot et al., 2017), The latter shows that high melt inputs can drive high basal owing to the greater difficulty of gathering observations in water pressures even when the channelised network grows the fast-flowing marine-terminating environment. Given the range of other processes operating at such glaciers, such as Published by Copernicus Publications on behalf of the European Geosciences Union. 906 S. J. Cook et al.: Coupled modelling of subglacial hydrology at Store Glacier submarine melting, fjord circulation, and calving, it is also by forcing at the glaciers’ termini (Todd et al., 2018). With much harder to disentangle and infer hydrological evolution the advent of the Subglacial Hydrology Model Intercom- from changes in surface velocity, though attempts have been parison Project (SHMIP) (de Fleurian et al., 2018), greater made (Howat et al., 2010; Joughin et al., 2008; Moon et confidence in the results of these models is now possible, al., 2014). Direct basal observations on marine-terminating which provides further motivation to apply them in this novel outlets were until recently limited to boreholes drilled near manner. This would then provide the ability to dynamically Swiss Camp and the lateral margin of Jakobshavn Isbræ model tidewater–glacier subglacial hydrology, allowing bet- (Lüthi et al., 2002). Only one study has, to date, reported ter prediction of plume and calving activity at the front, and direct observations from boreholes drilled along the cen- ice flow inland, ultimately leading to improved constraints tral flow line, to the base of a marine-terminating glacier in on future sea-level-rise scenarios. In this study we therefore Greenland. In that study, a persistently high basal water pres- apply a subglacial hydrological model to a large Greenland sure of 93 %–95 % of ice overburden indicates a largely inef- tidewater outlet glacier with the goals of (a) characterising ficient basal water system 30 km inland from the calving mar- the basal drainage system, including the extent to which it gin at the fast-flowing and heavily crevassed Store Glacier may become efficient, and (b) investigating how subglacial (Store) (Doyle et al., 2018). Yet, observed seasonal velocity discharge drives melting at the glacier’s terminus when con- fluctuations on the same glacier are consistent with the de- vective plumes develop. This study therefore couples a sub- velopment of a channelised basal drainage system closer to glacial hydrology model with a 1D plume model within the the margin (Young et al., 2019), which calls for a physical ice-flow model, Elmer/Ice (Gagliardini et al., 2013), in order model to spatially and temporally constrain the formation of to simulate the seasonal variation in the subglacial hydrolog- different types of basal drainage system. ical network of Store and the resulting plume melting. Hydrological work on marine-terminating glaciers has so far focused on the subglacial discharge that drives convec- tive plumes in the marine terminus environment and how 2 Data and methods this process can promote calving by undercutting the glacier The study site (Sect. 2.1), individual modelling components through submarine melting and fjord circulation (Carroll et (Sect. 2.2–2.4), and their relation to each other within the al., 2015; Cowton et al., 2015; Fried et al., 2015; Jackson et model set-up (Sect. 2.5) are described below, followed by al., 2017; Jouvet et al., 2018; Slater et al., 2018). In particu- details of the datasets used to prescribe boundary conditions lar, the state of the subglacial hydrological system is thought (Sect. 2.6). This paper presents coupled subglacial hydrology to be a key control on the rate and spatial distribution of and plume models within a full-Stokes 3D model of Store. submarine melting, with channelised drainage favouring the The subglacial hydrology model is GlaDS (Werder et al., highest localised melt rates, though distributed drainage may 2013), the ice-flow model is Elmer/Ice (Gagliardini et al., produce the highest total volume of submarine melting, with 2013), and the plume model is a 1D line plume (Slater et al., lower melt rates that affect a larger portion of the calving 2016). Each of these is described further in turn below. front (Fried et al., 2015; Slater et al., 2015). However, our ob- servations of the near-terminus subglacial hydrological sys- 2.1 Study site tem remain extremely limited; we can only make inferences about the location and presence of subglacial channels from Store Glacier (Store), one of the largest tidewater outlet the presence of plumes at the fjord surface (Schild et al., glaciers on the west coast of Greenland (70.4◦ N, 50.55◦ W), 2016), subsurface incisions into the calving front (Fried et flows into Ikerasak Fjord (Ikerasaup Sullua) at the southern al., 2015), and oceanographic observations (Stevens et al., end of the Uummannaq Fjord system (Fig.