by Pascal Buri
Although considerable progress has been made in recent years in
understanding the behaviour of debris-covered glaciers, many fundamental
processes on, within and surrounding this glacier type remain ill-understood.
As debris-covered glacier processes cross the fields of glaciology, geology,
geomorphology, hydrology and meteorology in unique ways, a wide range of
expertise is required to bridge our knowledge gaps.
The session we organized for the AGU Fall Meeting in California in
December 2019, co-organized by the Cryopshere and Earth and
Planetary Surface Processes focus groups, aimed to improve process
understanding related to debris-type glaciers and brought together expertise
from quite different fields, e.g.:
- Jaako Putkonen (University of North Dakota, USA) found glacier ice in ice cores more than 1 million years old, protected from sublimation by a thick debris layer on a glacier in Ong Valley (Transantarctic Mountains, Antarctica).
- Leif Anderson (GFZ Potsdam, Germany) explored the causes of glacier thinning under debris by numerically modelling sub-debris melt, debris-transport and ice dynamics in 2D. The theoretical simulations showed that the zone of maximum glacier thinning propagates from upglacier into the debris-covered part of the glacier, suggesting that reduced ice flow from upglacier leads to increased glacier thinning under debris. James Ferguson (University of Zurich, Switzerland) used a similar approach in order to simulate numerically the behaviour of debris-covered Zmuttgletscher (Swiss Alps), which could be compared to a 150-year record of historical topographical data.
- Eric Petersen (University of Arizona, USA) showed how a debris-covered glacier can be a transitional state between a debris-free alpine glacier and a rock glacier, by using observational data from Galena Creek Rock Glacier (Wyoming, USA).
- Alessandro Cicoira (University of Zurich, Switzerland) revealed the importance of water input for velocity-variations of rock glaciers in the Swiss Alps by using a numerical model with meteorological observations.
Abstracts:
Leif Anderson (GFZ Potsdam, Germany) - Ice
dynamical controls on the rapid thinning of debris-covered glaciers (Invited)
James Ferguson (U. Zurich, Switzerland) - Historical
Reconstruction and Numerical Modelling of Zmuttgletscher, Swiss Alps, Since the
Little Ice Age
Dawa Tshering Sherpa (Kathmandu U., Nepal) - Spatial
Distribution of Debris Thickness from Remote-Sensing and Modeling in
Marshyangdi River Basin, Nepal
Eric Petersen (U. Arizona, USA) - The
Transition from Alpine Glacier to Rock Glacier: A Case Study at Sulphur Creek,
Wyoming
Alessandro Cicoira (U. Zurich, Switzerland) - Resolving
the influence of climatic forcing on rock glacier dynamics: a numerical
modelling approach
Morgan Monz (U. of Minnesota Twin Cities, USA) - Crystallographic
preferred orientation in warm, coarse-grained ice: a case study, Storglaciären,
Sweden
Jaakko Putkonen (U. North Dakota, USA) - Ancient
Ice Preserved Under A Meter-Thick Layer Of Debris; Ong Valley, Transantarctic
Mountains, Antarctica
Emilio Mateo (Ohio State U., USA) - Evaluation
of inter-annual to decadal changes in tropical Andean stream chemistry below
debris-covered glaciers
Pascal Buri (U. Alaska Fairbanks, USA) - From the
Equator to the Pole: How Latitude Affects Incident Shortwave Radiation on
Supraglacial Ice Cliffs
Acknowledgements:
Thanks to the co-conveners of this session, Bob Anderson, Caroline
Aubry-Wake and Jakob Steiner, for making this session happen, and to all the
participants at our AGU session for great posters and exciting discussions
across fields!