Recent changes in area and thickness of Torngat Mountain glaciers (northern Labrador, Canada)

Abstract

Abstract. The Torngat Mountains National Park, northern Labrador, Canada, contains more than 120 small glaciers: the only remaining glaciers in continental northeast North America. These small cirque glaciers exist in a unique topoclimatic setting, experiencing temperate maritime summer conditions yet very cold and dry winters, and may provide insights into the deglaciation dynamics of similar small glaciers in temperate mountain settings. Due to their size and remote location, very little information exists regarding the health of these glaciers. Just a single study has been published on the contemporary glaciology of the Torngat Mountains, focusing on net mass balances from 1981 to 1984. This paper addresses the extent to which glaciologically relevant climate variables have changed in northern Labrador in concert with 20th-century Arctic warming, and how these changes have affected Torngat Mountain glaciers. Field surveys and remote-sensing analyses were used to measure regional glacier area loss of 27 % from 1950 to 2005, substantial rates of ice surface thinning (up to 6 m yr −1 ) and volume losses at Abraham, Hidden, and Minaret glaciers, between 2005 and 2011. Glacier mass balances appear to be controlled by variations in winter precipitation and, increasingly, by strong summer and autumn atmospheric warming since the early 1990s, though further observations are required to fully understand mass balance sensitivities. This study provides the first comprehensive contemporary assessment of Labrador glaciers and will inform both regional impact assessments and syntheses of global glacier mass balance.

The Aneto Glacier (Central Pyrenees) evolution from 1981 to 2022: ice loss observed from historic aerial image photogrammetry and recent remote sensing techniques

“…The fast shrinkage of Aneto Glacier in the last decades and the relatively low ice thicknness observed together with the potential development of new lakes, clearly show the consequences of climate change in mountain areas. Those changes happening nowadays in most mountain glaciers (Kääb et al, 2021;Barrand et al, 2017;DeBeer and Sharp, 2009) will have a major impact on mountain landscapes and ecosystems (Huss et al, 2017) showing the necessity of monitoring and understanding the recent fast evolution of these environments.…”

Consensus-Based Rock Glacier Inventorying in the Torngat Mountains, Northern Labrador

“…central Selamiut Range). The regional climate is classified as polar tundra (Kottek et al 2006;Way et al 2017) but has experienced rapid warming over the past several decades (Barrette et al 2020;Davis et al 2020), causing widespread expansion of upright vegetation (Davis et al 2020;Fraser et al 2011Fraser et al , 2012 and rapid melt of local glaciers (Barrand et al 2017;Barrette et al 2020). Regional geomorphology has been influenced by differential erosion caused by contrasting thermal regimes of basal ice (Staiger et al 2005).…”