Researcher part of critical team studying glaciers and climate change (12/15/2007)

Brad Danielson and Alex Gardner during time-lapse camera setup in spring 2007.

University of Ottawa geography professor Luke Copland is among researchers from 17 countries studying 19 Arctic tidewater glaciers to better understand how they react to climate change.

The international GLACIODYN project, which is part of the International Polar Year, is concerned with the effect of climate change on tidewater glacier flow, which increases the amount of freshwater pouring into oceans thus causing a rise in sea levels.

Tidewater glaciers drain directly into the ocean from large ice caps and ice sheets such as Greenland. Over the past decade, these glaciers have experienced accelerated ice flow and increased rates of mass loss by iceberg break-up. GLACIODYN researchers want to find out why.

In Canada, seven glaciologists have been working on the Belcher Glacier, a tidewater outlet of the Devon Island ice cap in the Arctic. The research team spent three months in the spring and summer of 2007 on the Belcher Glacier and will be going back in 2008. Their main task is to collect field data to develop a numerical model of the glacier, which will allow them to simulate and explain how it responds to climate change. The field research is augmented by remote sensing data, which will be used to apply field measurements to the scale of the whole glacier system.

"When we look at how glaciers and ice caps respond to climate change we know that their surface melting will increase" explains co-PI Dr. Luke Copland of the University of Ottawa, "but until recently we didn't realize that glaciers may also respond by speeding up due to increased meltwater lubrication of the glacier bed. This can result in a much more rapid loss of ice from an ice cap than melting alone."

So far the team has used ice-penetrating radar to measure ice thickness and map the topography under the ice. Researchers also installed time-lapse cameras to monitor the development of surface meltwater drainage systems and the break-up of icebergs during the summer melt season. They used global positioning systems (GPS) to measure ice movement, and installed automated weather stations to record local conditions.

The data will allow scientists to explore how the increased amount of meltwater draining into the glacier as the climate warms will affect the rate of ice flow and the subsequent break-up of icebergs.

A team led by Dr. Luke Copland, Director of University of Ottawa's new Laboratory for Cryospheric Research, will be heading to Devon Ice Cap in May 2008 to make measurements for the GLACIODYN project. One of three teams to visit the glacier next summer, Copland's will include two graduate students and one northern undergraduate student who will be using the fieldwork results towards their degrees. This will be the first major field expedition for the Laboratory for Cryospheric Research, which opened in September 2007 with funding from the Canadian Foundation for Innovation and Ontario Research Fund.

The Canadian GLACIODYN team also received substantial support from researchers using the Canadian research icebreaker CCGS Amundsen. They mapped the seabed topography and measured ocean conditions in the water at the glacier snout, giving the team information about what's happening under the front of the glacier, and how it affects the ice surface.

Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued by University of Ottawa

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