Seismic Sensors to Track Glaciers Meltwater
Published on by Water Network Research, Official research team of The Water Network in Academic
Researchers for the first time have used seismic sensors to track meltwater flowing through glaciers and into the ocean, an essential step to understanding the future of the world's largest glaciers as climate changes
The University of Texas Institute for Geophysics (UTIG) helped pioneer this new method on glaciers in Greenland and Alaska. The study will be published Aug. 10 in the journal Geophysical Research Letters .
Meltwater moving through a glacier into the ocean is critically important because it can increase melting and destabilize the glacier in a number of ways: The water can speed the glacier’s flow downhill toward the sea; it can move rocks, boulders and other sediments toward the terminus of the glacier along its base; and it can churn and stir warm ocean water, bringing it in contact with the glacier.
“It’s like when you drop an ice cube into a pot of warm water. It will eventually melt, but it will melt a lot faster if you stir that water,” said Timothy Bartholomaus, a postdoctoral fellow at UTIG and the study’s lead author. “Subglacial discharge provides that stirring.”
The new technique offers scientists a tool for tracking meltwater at glaciers that end in the ocean, called tidewater glaciers. Unlike landlocked glaciers, where scientists can simply measure the meltwater flowing in glacial rivers, there previously had not been a method available to track what’s occurring within tidewater glaciers.
“All of the biggest glaciers in Greenland, all of the biggest glaciers in Antarctica, they end in the ocean,” Bartholomaus said. “We need to understand how these glaciers are moving and how they are melting at their front. If we want to answer those questions, we need to know what’s occurring with the meltwater being discharged from the glacier.”
UTIG research associate Jake Walter worked on the study. The team also includes researchers from the University of Alaska Southeast, the U.S. Geological Survey and the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Bartholomaus did his fieldwork while studying for his doctorate at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, but he analyzed the data and wrote the study while at UTIG.
UTIG is a research unit of The University of Texas at Austin Jackson School of Geosciences.
Read the full study here
Source: UT News
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