Mass loss at the Greenland Ice Sheet is influenced by atmospheric processes controlling its surface mass balance, and by submarine melt and calving where glaciers terminate in fjords. There, an ice mélange – a composite matrix of calved ice bergs and sea ice – may provide a buttressing force on a glacier terminus and control terminus dynamics. Kangerlussuaq Glacier is a major outlet of the Greenland Ice Sheet, for which recent major retreat events in 2004/2005 and 2016–2018 coincided with the absence of an ice mélange in Kangerlussuaq Fjord. To better understand the response of Kangerlussuaq Glacier to climatic and oceanic drivers, a 2D flowline model is employed. Results indicate that an ice mélange buttressing force exerts a major control on calving frequency and rapid retreat. When an ice mélange forms in Kangerlussuaq Fjord, it provides stabilising forces and conditions favourable for winter terminus re-advance. When it fails to form during consecutive years, model results indicate that Kangerlussuaq Glacier is primed to retreat into the large overdeepenings in Kangerlussuaq Fjord, and to terminus positions more than 30 km farther inland, implying that excessive mass loss from Kangerlussuaq Glacier by the year 2065 cannot be excluded.

Ice skates are remarkably slippery across a wide range of conditions. We propose, based on earlier observations and new modeling, that an ice-rich slurry forms rapidly beneath a skate blade during each stride to lubricate the interface. Crushing from normal load and abrasion from sliding provide ice particles and heat to the slurry, with average contact pressures approaching melting pressures for the bulk ice. Shearing of the slurry by forward motion generates additional heat to melt the ice particles at the pressure-reduced temperature. We model these mechanics and link the viscosity of the resulting slurry to its ice fraction, which controls slurry-film thickness via lateral squeeze-flow. The slurry properties quickly converge to establish a highly efficient lubricating film that provides the characteristically low skate friction across a wide range of conditions. Although our 1D model greatly simplifies the complex interaction mechanics, its predictions are insensitive to most assumptions other than the average contact pressure. The presence of ice-rich slurries supporting skates merges pressure-melting, crushing, abrasion and lubricating films as a unified hypothesis for why skates are so slippery across broad ranges of speeds, temperatures and normal loads.

A supraglacial debris layer controls energy transfer to the ice surface and moderates ice ablation on debris-covered glaciers. Measurements of vertical temperature profiles within the debris enables the estimation of thermal diffusivities and sub-debris ablation rates. We have measured the debris-layer temperature profiles at 16 locations on Satopanth Glacier (central Himalaya) during the ablation seasons of 2016 and 2017. Debris temperature profile data are typically analysed using a finite-difference method, assuming that the debris layer is a homogeneous one-dimensional thermal conductor. We introduce three more methods for analysing such data that approximate the debris layer as either a single or a two-layered conductor. We analyse the performance of all four methods using synthetic experiments and by comparing the estimated ablation rates with in situ glaciological observations. Our analysis shows that the temperature measurements obtained at equispaced sensors and analysed with a two-layered model improve the accuracy of the estimated thermal diffusivity and sub-debris ablation rate. The accuracy of the ablation rate estimates is comparable to that of the in situ observations. We argue that measuring the temperature profile is a convenient and reliable method to estimate seasonal to sub-seasonal variations of ablation rates in the thickly debris-covered parts of glaciers.

Reliable, long-term records of glacier mass change are invaluable to the glaciological and climate-change communities and used to assess the importance of glacier wastage on streamflow. Here we evaluate the in-situ observations of glacier mass change for Place (1982–2020) and Peyto glaciers (1983–2020) in western Canada. We use geodetic mass balance to calibrate a physically-based mass-balance model coupled with an ice dynamics routine. We find large discrepancies between the glaciological and geodetic records for the periods 1987–1993 (Place) and 2001–2006 (Peyto). Over the period of observations, the exclusion of ice dynamics in the model increased simulated cumulative mass change by ~10.6 (24%) and 7.1 (21%) m w.e. for Place and Peyto glacier, respectively. Cumulative mass loss using geodetic, modelled and glaciological approaches are respectively − 30.5 ± 4.5, − 32.0 ± 3.6, − 29.7 ± 3.6 m w.e. for Peyto Glacier (1982–2017) and − 45.9 ± 5.2, − 43.1 ± 3.1, − 38.4 ± 5.1 m w.e. for Place Glacier (1981–2019). Based on discrepancies noted in the mass-balance records for certain decades (e.g. 1990s), we caution the community if these data are to be used for hydrological model development.

Air temperature inversions, a situation in which atmospheric temperature increases with height, are key components of the Arctic planetary boundary layer. The present study investigates the spatial and temporal variations of temperature inversions over different surface types (rock, gravel, snow, ice) along the Mittivakkat valley (southeast Greenland). For this purpose, 113 vertical profiles with high spatio-temporal resolution of air temperature and relative humidity were collected with unoccupied aerial vehicles (UAVs) during a 13-day field campaign in summer 2019. Air temperature inversions were present in 83% of the profiles, of which 24% were surface-based inversions and 76% were elevated inversions. The proglacial area covered with bare rock and gravel induces surface heating and convection during the day and, through interaction with local circulation patterns, leads to the frequent formation of elevated inversions. In contrast, the glacier surface itself acts as a persistent cooling surface and leads to the formation of surface-based inversions. A low-level fog layer that forms under the inversion layer may be causing non-linear vertical ablation gradients on Mittivakkat Gletsjer. Furthermore, we demonstrate that atmospheric measurements using UAVs can better capture small-scale processes than other products like radiosonde or modeled reanalysis data.

The Antarctic Peninsula's widespread glacier retreat and ice shelf collapse have been attributed to atmospheric and oceanic warming. Following the initial post-collapse period of retreat, several former tributary glaciers of the Larsen A and B ice shelves have been slowly re-advancing for more than a decade. Here, we use a flowline model of Crane Glacier to gauge the sensitivity of former tributary glaciers to future climate change following this period of long-term dynamic adjustment. The glacier's long-term geometry and speed changes are similar to those of other former Larsen A and B tributaries, suggesting that Crane Glacier is a reasonable representation of regional dynamics. For the unperturbed climate simulations, discharge remains nearly unchanged in 2018–2100, indicating that dynamic readjustment to shelf collapse took ~15 years. Despite large uncertainties in Crane Glacier's past and future climate forcing, a wide range of future climate scenarios leads to a relatively modest range in grounding line discharge (0.8–1.5 Gt a−1) by 2100. Based on the model results for Crane, we infer that although former ice shelf tributaries may readvance following collapse, similar to the tidewater glacier cycle, their dynamic response to future climate perturbations should be less than their response to ice shelf collapse.

Decadal-scale, high-resolution geodetic measurements of glacier thinning have transformed our understanding of glacier response to climate change. Annual glacier mass balance can be estimated using remote-sensing proxies like snow-line altitude. These methods require field data for calibration, which are not available for most glaciers. Here we propose a method that combines multiple remotely-sensed proxies to obtain robust estimates of the annual glacier-wide balance using only remotely-sensed decadal-scale geodetic mass balance for calibration. The method is tested on Chhota Shigri, Argentière and Saint-Sorlin glaciers in the Himalaya and the Alps between 2001 and 2020, using four remotely-sensed proxies – the snow-line altitude, the minimum summer albedo over the glacier and two statistics of normalised difference snow index over the off-glacier area around the ablation zone. The reconstructed mass balance compares favourably with the corresponding glaciological field data (correlation coefficient 0.81 − 0.90, p < 0.001; root mean squared error 0.38 − 0.43 m w.e. a−1). The method presented may be useful to study interannual variability in mass balance on glaciers where no field data are available.

Data assimilation in high-order ice flow modeling is a challenging and computationally costly task, yet crucial to find ice thickness and ice flow parameter distributions that are consistent with ice flow mechanics and mass balance while best matching observations. Failing to find these distributions that are required as initial conditions leads to a disequilibrium between mass balance and ice flow, resulting in nonphysical transient effects in the prognostic model. Here we tackle this problem by inverting an emulator of the Stokes ice flow model based on deep learning. By substituting the ice flow equations using a convolutional neural network emulator, we simplify, make more robust and dramatically speed up the solving of the underlying optimization problem thanks to automatic differentiation, stochastic gradient methods and implementation of graphics processing unit (GPU). We demonstrate this process by simultaneously inferring the ice thickness distribution, ice flow parametrization and ice surface of ten of the largest glaciers in Switzerland. As a result, we obtain a high degree of assimilation while guaranteeing an equilibrium between mass-balance and ice flow mechanics. The code runs very efficiently (optimizing one large-size glacier at 100 m takes < 1 min on a laptop) while it is open-source and publicly available.

Ice streams are sites of ice-sheet drainage and together with other processes, such as calving, have an impact on deglaciation rates and ice-sheet mass balance. Proglacial lake deposits provide records of ice-sheet deglaciation and have the potential to supplement other paleoclimate records. Oneida Lake, northeastern USA, contains a thick proglacial lake sequence that buries evidence of ice streaming and a paleo-calving margin that developed during retreat of the Laurentide Ice Sheet. Previous high-resolution digital elevation models identified the Oneida Ice Stream from glacial landforms northwest of the lake. In this study, we utilize seismic refractions from a multichannel seismic (MCS) reflection dataset to estimate the thickness of glacial deposits using seismic tomography. With this method we constrain the depth to top of Paleozoic strata, especially in areas where the reflection data yielded poor outcomes and validate our reflection data in regions of good coverage. We demonstrate that where long offset seismic data are available, the first-arrival tomography method is useful in studies of formerly glaciated basins. Our study identifies a ~108 m thick sedimentary section and potentially long paleoclimate record in Oneida Lake, and identifies a paleotopographic low that likely encouraged formation of the Oneida Ice Stream.

On the Kamchatka Peninsula in the Russian Far East, 405 glaciers with an estimated total mass of 49 Gt were reported in the 1970s. These have been retreating at an accelerated rate since the start of the 21st century. Because glacier studies in this region are scarce, ice loss and its influence on sea level rise and regional environments is poorly understood. In this study, we analyzed satellite data to quantify glacier mass change from 2000 to 2016 in six major glacier-covered regions on the peninsula. The mean rate of the glacier mass change over the study period was −0.46 ± 0.01 m w.e. a−1 (total mass change was −4.9 ± 0.1 Gt, −304.2 ± 9.1 Mt a−1), which is slightly lower than other regions in mid-latitude and subarctic zones. The mass loss accelerated from >−0.33 ± 0.02 m w.e. a−1 in the period 2000–2006/2010 to <−1.65 ± 0.12 m w.e. a−1 in 2006/2010–2015/16. The increase in mass loss is attributed to a rise in average decadal summer temperatures observed in the region (+0.68°C from 1987–99 to 2000–13). Moreover, a recent trend in Pacific decadal oscillation suggests future acceleration of mass loss due to a decline in winter precipitation.

Mass loss from iceberg calving at marine-terminating glaciers is one of the largest and most poorly constrained contributors to sea-level rise. However, our understanding of the processes controlling ice fracturing and crevasse evolution is incomplete. Here, we use Gabor filter banks to automatically map crevasse density and orientation through time on a ~150 km2 terminus region of Narsap Sermia, an outlet glacier of the southwest Greenland ice sheet. We find that Narsap Sermia is dominated by transverse (flow-perpendicular) crevasses near the ice front and longitudinal (flow-aligned) crevasses across its central region. Measured crevasse orientation varies on sub-annual timescales by more than 45$^\circ$ in response to seasonal velocity changes, and also on multi-annual timescales in response to broader dynamic changes and glacier retreat. Our results show a gradual up-glacier propagation of the zone of flow-transverse crevassing coincident with frontal retreat and acceleration occurring in 2020/21, in addition to sub-annual crevasse changes primarily in transition zones between longitudinal to transverse crevasse orientation. This provides new insight into the dynamics of crevassing at large marine-terminating glaciers and a potential approach for the rapid identification of glacier dynamic change from a single pair of satellite images.

Shallow firn cores, in addition to a near-basal ice core, were recovered in 2018 from the Quelccaya ice cap (5470 m a.s.l) in the Cordillera Vilcanota, Peru, and in 2017 from the Nevado Illimani glacier (6350 m a.s.l) in the Cordillera Real, Bolivia. The two sites are ~450 km apart. Despite meltwater percolation resulting from warming, particle-based trace element records (e.g. Fe, Mg, K) in the Quelccaya and Illimani shallow cores retain well-preserved signals. The firn core chronologies, established independently by annual layer counting, show a convincing overlap indicating the two records contain comparable signals and therefore capture similar regional scale climatology. Trace element records at a ~1–4 cm resolution provide past records of anthropogenic emissions, dust sources, volcanic emissions, evaporite salts and marine-sourced air masses. Using novel ultra-high-resolution (120 μm) laser technology, we identify annual layer thicknesses ranging from 0.3 to 0.8 cm in a section of 2000-year-old radiocarbon-dated near-basal ice which compared to the previous annual layer estimates suggests that Quelccaya ice cores drilled to bedrock may be older than previously suggested by depth-age models. With the information collected from this study in combination with past studies, we emphasize the importance of collecting new surface-to-bedrock ice cores from at least the Quelccaya ice cap, in particular, due to its projected disappearance as soon as the 2050s.

The retreat rates of Triangular Glacier since 1979 and its mass changes during the period 2014/15–2019/20 indicate the sensitive response of small ice masses on the eastern side of the Antarctic Peninsula to air temperature evolution. This cirque glacier in the northern part of James Ross Island receded rapidly during the period of regional warming in the late 20th century, losing 30.8% of its surface area between 1979 and 2006 (−1.7% a−1). The retreat rate then dropped to −0.3% a−1 following the regional cooling trend, but started to accelerate again (−0.8 to −2.3% a−1) with increasing air temperature since the summer 2014/15. Since the glaciological year 2015/16, Triangular Glacier has experienced enhanced snow melt, wind scour and permanent mass loss with annual mass balance ranging from −0.08 ± 0.35 to −0.56 ± 0.25 m w.e. The largest mass loss was observed in the glaciological year 2019/20, which included the warmest summer of the observation period. The cumulative mass balance of −1.66 ± 0.83 m w.e. over the years 2014/15–2019/20 is consistent with the termination of the positive mass-balance period that occurred in the north-eastern Antarctic Peninsula from 2009/10 to 2014/15.

Future mass loss projections of the Greenland ice sheet require understanding of the processes at a glacier terminus, especially of iceberg calving. We present detailed and high-rate terrestrial radar interferometer observations of Eqip Sermia and Bowdoin Glacier, two outlet glaciers in Greenland with comparable dimensions and investigate iceberg calving, surface elevation, velocity, strain rates and their links to air temperature, tides and topography. The results reveal that the two glaciers exhibit very different flow and calving behaviour on different timescales. Ice flow driven by a steep surface slope with several topographic steps leads to high velocities, areas of extension and intense crevassing, which triggers frequent but small calving events independent of local velocity gradients. In contrast, ice flow under smooth surface slopes leaves the ice relatively intact, such that sporadic large-scale calving events dominate, which initiate in areas with high shearing. Flow acceleration caused by enhanced meltwater input and tidal velocity variations were observed for terminus sections close to floatation. Firmly grounded terminus sections showed no tidal signal and a weak short-term reaction to air temperature. These results demonstrate reaction timescales to external forcings from hours to months, which are, however, strongly dependent on local terminus geometry.

Glacier change in Kenai Fjords National Park in southcentral Alaska affects local terrestrial, fresh water and marine ecosystems and will likely impact ecotourism. We used Landsat 4–8 imagery from 1984 through 2021 to manually map lower glacier ice margins for 19 maritime glaciers in Kenai Fjords National Park. Of these glaciers, six are tidewater, three are lake-terminating, six are land-terminating and four terminated in more than one environment throughout the study period. We used the mapped ice margins to quantify seasonal terminus position and areal change, including distinguishing between ice loss at glacier termini and along glacier margins. Overall, 13 glaciers substantially retreated (more than 2σ), 14 lost substantial area and only two underwent both net advance and area gain. The glaciers that had insubstantial length and area changes were predominantly tidewater. Cumulatively, the lower reaches of these 19 glaciers lost 42 km2 of ice, which was nearly evenly distributed between the terminus and the lateral margins. The rapid rate of glacier change and subsequent land cover changes are highly visible to visitors and locals at Kenai Fjords National Park, and this study quantifies those changes in terms of glacier length and area.

The Tian Shan mountain range, known as the water towers of Central Asia, plays a key role in local water supply, yet large uncertainties remain about the amount of water that is stored in its glaciers. In this study, we assess the impact of the boundary conditions on ice thickness estimates using two inversion models: a mass conservation (MC) model and a basal shear stress (BS) model. We compare the widely used Randolph Glacier Inventory version 6 with the updated Glacier Area Mapping for Discharge from the Asian Mountains glacier inventory, as well as two digital elevation models (SRTM DEM and Copernicus DEM). The results show that the ice volume (in ~2000 CE) in the Tian Shan range is 661.0 ± 163.5 km3 for the MC model and 552.8 ± 85.3 km3 for the BS model. There are strong regional differences due to inventory, especially for glaciers in China (17–25%). However, the effect of different DEM sources on ice volume estimation is limited. By the end of the 21st century, the projected mass loss differences between inventories are higher than between adjacent emission scenarios, illustrating the vital importance of high-quality inventories. These differences should be carefully considered during water resource planning.

Antarctica's ice shelves stabilize the ice sheet and, therefore, understanding processes affecting the mass budgets of ice shelves is important for estimating grounded ice loss. To study the ice shelf dynamics, we analyzed seismological and GNSS data from the Ekström Ice Shelf in Dronning Maud Land. We extracted probabilistic power spectral densities (PPSD) in the frequency band 3.4–6.8 Hz, typical of icequakes, from seismological data and observed pronounced signals in the PPSD with near 3 and 4 cycles per day (cpd) corresponding to tidal overharmonics, in addition to the main tidal constituents near 1 and 2 cpd. GNSS data reveal the same components in ice flow speed but not in vertical displacements. Generally, tide-induced grounding line migration modulates the flow velocity of an entire ice shelf. We find that this velocity modulation causes the increased icequake activity in the tidal overharmonics with 3 and 4 cpd in an ice shear zone where the flow velocity drops to nearly zero.

We present geodetic mass-balance estimates for ten glaciers (22.6 ± 1.1 km2) around Volcán Domuyo between 1962 and 2020 (and 46 glaciers covering 29 ± 1.5 km2 between 1984 and 2020), derived from airborne, ASTER and Pléiades imagery. Overall, we find a slightly negative mass balance (−0.15 ± 0.09 m w.e. a–1) for the entire 1962–2020 time span. A closer inspection of sub-periods reveals, however, an increasingly negative mass balance with time. The Domuyo glaciers shifted from a moderately positive mass balance of +0.28 ± 0.13 m w.e. a–1 between 1962 and 1984, to a strongly negative mass balance of −0.99 ± 0.19 m w.e. a–1 between 2012 and 2020. An increase in summer temperatures and a decrease in winter precipitation during the last four decades are likely drivers of the observed glacier changes. We support this finding by implementing a minimal glacier model, relying solely on monthly precipitation and air temperatures. The mass-balance evolution detected in Volcán Domuyo is consistent with other sites spread across the Central Andes, suggesting rapidly increasing glacier wastage impacts are occurring at a geographically wider scale.

Basal crevasses are macroscopic structural discontinuities at the base of ice sheets and glaciers that arise by fracture. Motivated by observations and by the mechanics of elastic fracture, we hypothesise that spatial variations in basal stress (in the presence of basal water pressure) can promote and localise basal crevassing. We quantify this process in the theoretical context of linear elastic fracture mechanics. We develop a model evaluating the effect of shear-stress variation on the growth of basal crevasses. Our results indicate that sticky patches promote the propagation of basal crevasses, increase their length of propagation into the ice and, under some conditions, give them curved trajectories that incline upstream. A detailed exploration of the parameter space is conducted to gain a better understanding of the conditions under which sticky-patch-induced basal crevassing is expected beneath ice sheets and glaciers.

Supraglacial drainage networks play an integral role in both glacier dynamics and run-off timing, and mapping them provides insight into their role in glacial systems. Here we present a reproducible approach for semi-automated mapping of supraglacial hydrologic features, which complements existing work in automated and manual mapping by providing clear definitions for identification of features. This framework uses a digital terrain model (DTM) to identify potential flow routes on the glacier surface, which are then classified using a set of standardized rules based on the DTM and an orthomosaic. We found that the normalized difference water index calculated from digital imagery was influenced by image brightness and introduce a new approach using average RGB values to correct for this. Using this framework we mapped supraglacial drainage networks at Nàłùdäy and Thores Glacier, Canada. The framework was easier to implement with high-resolution (0.5 m) imagery and DTMs, compared to data with lower resolution (10 m), due to the increased detail in topography and feature boundaries at high-resolution. Lower-resolution data captured larger streams (>2 pixels wide), however, indicating that the framework can still be used at this resolution. Mapping supraglacial hydrology using standardized methods opens possibilities for investigating many questions relating to changes in supraglacial hydrology over time.