Greenland tidewater glacier advanced rapidly during era of Norse settlement


Pearce, Danni M, Lea, James M ORCID: 0000-0003-1885-0858, Mair, Douglas WF ORCID: 0000-0001-7009-5461, Rea, Brice R, Schofield, J Edward, Kamenos, Nicholas A, Schoenrock, Kathryn M, Stachnik, Lukasz, Lewis, Bonnie, Barr, Iestyn et al (show 1 more authors) (2022) Greenland tidewater glacier advanced rapidly during era of Norse settlement. GEOLOGY, 50 (6). pp. 704-709.

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Abstract

<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>Our ability to improve prognostic modeling of the Greenland Ice Sheet relies on understanding the long-term relationships between climate and mass flux (via iceberg calving) from marine-terminating tidewater glaciers (TWGs). Observations of recent TWG behavior are widely available, but long-term records of TWG advance are currently lacking. We present glacial geomorphological, sedimentological, archaeological, and modeling data to reconstruct the ~20 km advance of Kangiata Nunaata Sermia (KNS; the largest tidewater glacier in southwest Greenland) during the first half of the past millennium. The data show that KNS advanced ~15 km during the 12th and 13th centuries CE at a rate of ~115 m a−1, contemporaneous with regional climate cooling toward the Little Ice Age and comparable to rates of TWG retreat witnessed over the past ~200 years. Presence of Norse farmsteads proximal to KNS demonstrates their resilience to climate change, manifest as a rapidly advancing TWG in a cooling climate. The results place limits on the magnitude of ice-margin advance and demonstrate TWG sensitivity to climate cooling as well as warming. These data combined with our grounding-line stability analysis provide a long-term record that validates approaches to numerical modeling aiming to link calving to climate.</jats:p>

Item Type: Article
Uncontrolled Keywords: 13 Climate Action
Divisions: Faculty of Science and Engineering > School of Environmental Sciences
Depositing User: Symplectic Admin
Date Deposited: 17 Mar 2022 17:25
Last Modified: 15 Mar 2024 00:31
DOI: 10.1130/G49644.1
Related URLs:
URI: https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/id/eprint/3151017
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