Capturing the transition from marine to land-terminating glacier from the 126-year retreat history of Nordenskiöldbreen, Svalbard

Abstract

Svalbard has experienced a dramatic increase in air temperature and glacier retreat since the end of the Little Ice Age. In many cases, this retreat has resulted in glaciers transitioning from being marine-terminating to land-terminating. Nordenskiöldbreen is an excellent contemporary example of this transition. A set of historical observations of glacier front positions was used to assess Nordenskiöldbreen's retreat rate and we found that the southern portion of the glacier front retreated by ~3500 m, since records began in 1896. The general retreat rate corresponds well with the air temperature trend during most of the 20th century. However, the average retreat rate has slowed since the 1990s despite increasing air temperatures. We show that this discrepancy between air temperature and retreat rate marks the transition from marine-terminating towards a land-terminating glacier, as the glacier's bedrock topography started to play an essential role in the glacier margin geometry, ice flow and retreat dynamics.

A Boulder Beach Formed by Waves From a Calving Glacier Revisited: Multidecadal Tsunami–Controlled Coastal Changes in Front of Eqip Sermia, West Greenland

“…The geomorphological transformation of glacial forms into paraglacial landscapes is currently observed throughout the Arctic. In several Arctic fjords, the climate-influenced transformation of glacial systems from a marine-terminating type to a land-terminating type has been observed (e.g., Nordenskiöldbreen [19], Renardbreen [28]). As a result, entirely new shorelines form consisting of unstable glaciogenic sediments prone to rapid modification by marine processes.…”

“…In the years 1912–1960, when the ice cliff was much lower than today (30–60 m), calving probably did not produce such large waves; thus, erosive force was lower. In contrast to other glaciers (e.g., Nordenskiöldbreen, Svalbard [19]; Bowdoin Glacier, Greenland [20]), the glacier retreat did not result in glacier thinning in the following years. The ice cliff has been growing constantly (in 2016, it was 200 m [14]), which might have led to the increased energy and height of the waves.…”

The Expanding of Proglacial Lake Amplified the Frontal Ablation of Jiongpu Co Glacier since 1985

“…The velocity at the glacier front also showed a slightly lower and relatively stable during the same period (Figure S2). This may be attributed to the dramatic decrease in the maximum lake depth along the glacier front from ~160 m in 2015 to ~40 m in 2016 (Figure S3), which might have slowed down the ice flow and stabilized the glacier front [56,57].…”

The impact of subglacial drainage system evolution and glacier lake outburst on Arctic fjord macronutrient dynamics: Kongsfjorden, Svalbard

“…The Svalbard archipelago is an epicenter of this change, warming at rates 2-2.5 times more than the Arctic average and 5-7 times more than the global average (Isaksen et al, 2022). As a result, many glaciers in Svalbard have been retreating and thinning since the beginning of the 20th century (Kohler et al, 2007;Schuler et al, 2020;Geyman et al, 2022), with some tidewater glaciers already having retreated onto land (Blaszczyk et al, 2009, Kavan et al, 2023. With increasing rates of glacier melting, greater volumes of freshwater and glacial sediments are released into fjords (van Pelt et al, 2019), altering physicochemical properties (Halbach et al, 2019;Pavlov et al, 2019), fjord circulation manuscript submitted to JGR Biogeosciences (Torsvik et al, 2019) and contributing to coastal water darkening in Svalbard fjords (Konik et al, 2021).…”