Crevasse density, orientation and temporal variability at Narsap Sermia, Greenland.

ABSTRACT: 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 in response to seasonal velocity changes, and also on multi-annual timescales in r

SUBMITTER: Van Wyk de Vries M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11443167 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature