Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Change Points Detected In Decadal And Seasonal Trends Of Outlet Glacier Terminus Positions Across West Greenland, Ashley V. York, Karen E. Frey, Sadegh Jamali, Sarah B. Das

Geography

We investigated the change in terminus position between 1985 and 2015 of 17 marine-terminating glaciers that drain into Disko and Uummannaq Bays, West Greenland, by manually digitizing over 5000 individual frontal positions from over 1200 Landsat images. We find that 15 of 17 glacier termini retreated over the study period, with ~80% of this retreat occurring since 2000. Increased frequency of Landsat observations since 2000 allowed for further investigation of the seasonal variability in terminus position. We identified 10 actively retreating glaciers based on a significant positive relationship between glaciers with cumulative retreat >300 m since 2000 and their average …