Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Glaciology
Seasonal ice dynamics control the timing of crevasse drainage at a fast-flowing outlet glacier
Published: 2025-10-07
Subjects: Glaciology
Crevasse field drainage transfers at least half of the seasonal runoff from the surface to the bed of the Greenland Ice Sheet, but the patterns of drainage are complex and spatio-temporally heterogenous. To better understand controls on crevasse drainage processes, we use an automated deep learning method to map the seasonal filling and drainage of water-filled crevasses at Sermeq Kujalleq (Store [...]
AI-Powered Flood Risk Assessment for Gilgit-Baltistan Using Multi-Source Satellite Data and Machine Learning
Published: 2025-09-20
Subjects: Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Geography, Geomorphology, Glaciology, Hydrology
Flood disasters are intensifying worldwide due to climate change, with mountainous regions among the most vulnerable yet least studied. This paper presents an AI-powered flood risk assessment framework for Gilgit-Baltistan, Pakistan, a high-mountain region prone to flash floods and glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs). Multi-source satellite datasets—including CHIRPS precipitation, JRC Global [...]
Nonlinear longitudinal stress coupling in glacier and ice sheet flow
Published: 2025-09-18
Subjects: Applied Mathematics, Fluid Dynamics, Glaciology, Non-linear Dynamics
The Greenland and Antarctic Ice sheets exhibit high variability in flow speed, over multiple orders of magnitude. Faster flow in ice streams, marine terminating glaciers, and ice shelves is described by the Shallow Shelf/Shelfy-Stream Approximation (SSA), which requires a nonlocal balance between driving stress, friction at the ice-bed interface, and longitudinal/membrane stresses. Nonlocal [...]
Snowdrift and Accumulation on Landfast Ice Around Antarctic Icebergs: Insights from Modeling and Observational Data
Published: 2025-08-29
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Glaciology
Snow cover influences sea ice thermodynamics and mass balance, making its distribution and properties critical to polar research. Grounded icebergs in coastal Antarctica substantially affect surface snow distribution and landfast sea ice patterns, which has received limited scientific attention. To address this gap, this study integrates observational data with numerical snow transport [...]
Surface Expression of Low Basal Friction Upstream of Antarctic Grounding Lines
Published: 2025-08-27
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Glaciology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Ice sheets leave contact with the bed at grounding lines, beyond which floating ice shelves experience no friction at their base. In places where basal friction begins to decrease upstream of the grounding line, ice sheets respond more strongly to climate forcing. However, the spatial extent of zones of low grounding line friction is poorly constrained by observations. Here, we use a steady-state [...]
Surging glaciers in Svalbard: Observing their distribution, characteristics and evolution
Published: 2025-08-21
Subjects: Geomorphology, Glaciology
Glacier surges are episodes of significantly increased ice flow due to ice-dynamical feedbacks, and are often repeated in a quasi-periodical manner. Ice mass is redistributed during a surge, which leads to surface lowering at high elevation as ice is transferred down-glacier and thickening nearer the terminus. In this paper, we review different approaches for monitoring and detecting glacier [...]
An Ice Core Snapshot of Past Atmospheric Chemistry in Mt. Everest’s 'Death Zone'
Published: 2025-08-21
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Geochemistry, Glaciology, Other Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
We present a unique atmospheric chemistry record from the highest ice core ever recovered (8020 m, South Col Glacier (SCG), Mt. Everest), that captures ~400 years of deposition during the latter half of the first millennium BCE. Due to recent glacier thinning, the upper ~2000 years of accumulation have been lost, however, this is the only ice core record ever recovered from the “Death Zone [...]
QuakeMigrate: a Python Package for Automatic Earthquake Detection and Location Using Waveform Migration and Stacking
Published: 2025-07-25
Subjects: Geophysics and Seismology, Glaciology, Volcanology
QuakeMigrate is a modular, open-source Python package providing a framework to efficiently and automatically detect and locate microseismicity. From raw seismic waveforms and a modest number of physically meaningful inputs and tuneable parameters, it produces catalogues of earthquakes including hypocentres, their associated uncertainties, phase arrival times, and local magnitude estimates, all of [...]
Ice dynamic and hydrological response to ice-dammed lake drainages at Isunnguata Sermia, West Greenland
Published: 2025-07-17
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Glaciology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Ice-marginal lakes are increasingly common around Greenland and are important for modulating glacier runoff and dynamics. This study investigates the evolution of a ~3 km2 and up to ~100 m deep ice-dammed lake at Isunnguata Sermia, West Greenland. Satellite observations between 1987 and 2024, and field observations of a 2023 drainage using passive seismics, GNSS and time-lapse imagery reveal that [...]
Glacier algae phenology on the Qaanaaq Ice Cap (Northwest Greenland)
Published: 2025-07-07
Subjects: Glaciology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Glacier algae are relevant factors in the darkening phenomenon of glaciers, especially at the margins of the ice sheets. This study focuses on glacier algae variation during summer seasons in the 2016-2023 period at Qaanaaq Ice Cap, NW Greenland. Based on ice samples and field spectroscopy measurements, an empirical model is proposed to estimate glacier algae abundance from a reflectance ratio [...]
On the demise of Whistler, Horstman and Blackcomb Glaciers, southwest British Columbia, Canada: historical use, recent change and future prospects within a mountain resort
Published: 2025-07-02
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Glaciology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Atmospheric warming is causing glaciers worldwide to retreat and disappear, with repercussions for nearby communities. Effects of glacier retreat have been especially consequential for mountain resorts such as Whistler Blackcomb, Canada, where almost 60 years of summer glacier use has been terminated due to the ongoing demise of Whistler, Horstman and Blackcomb Glaciers. Over the past five [...]
The formation and evolution of the supraglacial weathering crust on the Greenland Ice Sheet
Published: 2025-07-01
Subjects: Glaciology
The formation and evolution of the supraglacial weathering crust on the Greenland Ice Sheet
A Markov chain Monte Carlo approach for geostatistically simulating mass-conserving subglacial topography
Published: 2025-06-26
Subjects: Glaciology, Other Statistics and Probability
Subglacial topography is critically important for simulating ice sheet evolution and projecting sea-level contributions. However, the subglacial topography of the Antarctic Ice Sheet is sparsely measured. Obtaining a gridded topography map used in ice sheet simulations requires interpolating the sparse measurements or inverting topography from observations of ice velocity and surface elevation. [...]
Mapping textures of polar ice cores using 3D laboratory X-ray microscopy
Published: 2025-06-20
Subjects: Climate, Earth Sciences, Glaciology
Deep ice cores from polar ice sheets enable reconstructions of Earth’s past climate. Ice-core records are therefore crucial for projecting future climate change, however, our ability to interpret them relies on our understanding of polycrystalline-ice microstructures and mechanics. In turn, these microstructures enable modeling of ice flow and large-scale effects of ice-sheet evolution. Since [...]
WITHDRAWN: Constraining the onset of future irreversible retreat of Thwaites Glacier, Antarctica
Published: 2025-06-15
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Glaciology
withdrawn