Helheim Gletscher / Fernisgletscher / South East Greenland

[Espen]

Calving Event
Great video from July 24 2013 Helheim Calving Event by Hans Henrik Tholstrup, the clip was made by an "accident", a Geologist wanted to pick up some some pieces of rocks nearby, and then the whole "Rock Concert" started across the fjord.

[Espen]

Thanks to the video above I have a animation ready, showing the calving on July 24 2013.

Please click on image to enlarge and start the animation!

[Espen]

I have just updated the Helheim calving animation with more frames, since there obviously were several dates of calving events, please check it out on the Petermann thread:

https://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php/topic,270.msg14130.html#msg14130ing li

In the image below you see the pre-calving line June 2013 (red line) and the retreat between June 2013 and August was up to 1.4 km.

[Espen]

Maybe an evidence of melt water channels?

Please click on image to enlarge!

[Espen]

A little more information on Helheim and a how big the recent calving was compared to the years since 1972. You can see from the series of images from 1972 - 2013, that roughly 25 % *) of all ice lost since 1972 was lost in the period from mid June 16 2013 to Aug 19 2013.
The red line at both Helheim Gletscher  and Fernis Gletscher indicates the 1972 calving line, and the yellow line at Helheim the calving line prior to the 2013 calving series (June 16 2013).

*) Growth of glacier in the period excluded.
 

Please click on image to enlarge.

[Andreas Muenchow]

Maybe an evidence of melt water channels?

Probably not. The melt-channels of Pine Island and Petermann Glaciers are at the bottom of floating ice shelves where they contact the ocean and often extend  >10 km along the shelf often originating at the grounding line. Helheim Glacier does not have an ice shelf as it is grounded entirely on bed rock. It has large crevasses, though which I suspect is what shows after the chip of ice broke off and tipped over to become a large iceberg.

[Espen]

When watching the video above, I noticed those 2 holes came up from below sea/ice level, and the ice cliff of Helheim is +/- 100 meter, and from what I see from the picture is smoothed edges around them and deeper blue color indicating another surface as well.

[Espen]

First sighting of Helheim Glacier by Landsat:

 

[Espen]

Calving event:

Helheim Gletscher did a +/- 1 km calving between March 16 and March 30 2014. Remember the glacier is 5,7 km wide at the calving front.

Please click on image to enlarge and start animation!

[Shared Humanity]

It is amazing how fast the previously calved bergs move down the fjord.

[Espen]

Further calving action at Helheimgletscher:

Please click on image to start animation!

[Espen]

Be aware, Helheim is fast moving monster (probably why it is named so), the calving line seen late 2013 moved some 2 -  3 km during the winter, we will follow it during the season to see where it ends this season.
BTW, IceBridge 2014 is flying above Helheim at this very moment!

[Wipneus]

Espen suggested an animation in natural colors. Here is one for March 16 to April 15 in 15m resolution.
The last frame has an arrow drawn showing the movement in those 30 days. The arrow is 38pix to the right and 12pix down. That translates to approximately 598 m, or 19.9 m/day.
To my limited knowledge that translates to "fast", but not as fast my Jakobshavn measurement that was about 28m/day.

Not that the rocks on the north of the glaciers seem to wobble a bit, this is caused by the landsat images picked from different paths: you are not seeing them from the same angle. For the glacier ice it should not matter as that has more or less the same elevation.

(click the picture for the animation to start )

[Espen]

Further action at Helheim:

Please click on image to start animation!

[Shared Humanity]

OK.....stupid question.

It appears as if the 2 distinct flows of ice (I can't name them but the larger flow from the top of the image and more narrow flow from the bottom) behave differently at the calving face. The wider flow from the top appears to calve more readily. What would cause this?

[Espen]

Mai ru.

[Espen]

May 10 update:

Notice how the whole glacier is moving and not only at the calving front, it is just amazing !

[Espen]

To better illustrate the movement of this massive ice machine, the encircled part is approximately 30 - 37 km from the calving front of Helheim Glacier. And we are only seeing 10 days of action!

There is map image below the animation.

Please click on the image to start the animation!

[Espen]

Helheim (1.) is qualified to be on of the four super iceways of Greenland together with Jakobshavn (2.), Petermann / Humboldt (3.) and Zachariae (4.).

[sidd]

Here are some pics of Helheim

1)Rignot(2012) velocity map
2)Bamber(2013), 200m bedrock contours (resolution here is sparse, as you can see from the blocking artefacts)
3)50 m surface contour overlaid over bedrock

sidd

[sidd]

one more. 200 m bedrock contour again, but zoomed out. And one comment. Espen speaks of Helheim "pulling" the ice upstream; this is calculated in a Pattyn(?) paper as "membrane stress" transmitted over large distances in hours, as oppesed to much slower plastic, viscous deformation. Unfortunately i cannot recall the reference, i am very pressed for time. or i would look it up.

sidd

[Espen]

Thanks Sidd,

That really explains why the North Western branch, is the dominating part of the Helheim Glacier System, just puzzled about the moving "island" in the animation is due to a high elevation bedrock or a depression, due to the slope?

[sidd]

I think it is the depression in the bedrok, but i am not sure. There is probably water under there, a detailed hydrological analysis would reveal more, but i have no time to do the calculation (it is affected by surface slope) I will probably await a paper like the Lewis analysis which i have referred to elsewhere.

sidd

[Espen]

Another week of action, notice the speed of this monster.

Please click on image to start animation:

[Espen]

More calving at Helheim:

[Buddy]

Wow...nice sequence.  If it keeps up that speed....it will almost make it back to the confluence of the two main glaciers in another couple of months.

[Espen]

Helheim update:

As you see, there is a lot happening around Helheim these days, notice the newly developed melt ponds around on top of the glacier:

Please click on image to start animation!

[Shared Humanity]

Seems like a lot of calving too.

[Espen]

A Helheim update is due:

Click on image to start animation!

[Espen]

When Landsat is ready, I am! But in the meantime I can observe we had some heavy calving and maybe even retreat (with the help of Modis).

[Espen]

More massive calving at Helheim Gletscher:

Please click on image to start animation!

[Laurent]

Hello Espen,
Thanks for your great work. Can you add automaticaly a scale in your post ? if easily done !

[TerryM]

Espen
Can't help but think that those bare rocks storing a lot of heat.


Terry

[Espen]

Laurent, the width of the glacier is +/- 6 km.

[Laurent]

So around 1km retreat in 15 days...

[Espen]

Laurent,

Not retreat, but +/- 1 km was calved, the calving front was further back in Sep/Oct 2013.

[crandles]

Laurent,

Not retreat, but +/- 1 km was calved, the calving front was further back in Sep/Oct 2013.

was just going to say still not quite back to where it was in Sep 06 or Aug 13. But then it is only July.

[Espen]

To clear up thing, here is the calving front September 3 2013 vs. July 4 2014:

Please click on image to enlarge!

[Espen]

Helheim update:

Since July 4, Helheim only expanded, but its the fjord system sister Fernisgletscher seen to the right in the animation below, is now in the retreat zone:

Please click on image to start the animation!

[Shared Humanity]

Espen...

In this last image, as the sea ice melts, you can see large areas of the water that have a tan color. Is this sediment?

[Espen]

Espen...

In this last image, as the sea ice melts, you can see large areas of the water that have a tan color. Is this sediment?

Shared Humanity,

Tan color, where?

[solartim27]

I think it's the rock erosion on the upper right side.

[Espen]

Another week with serious calving:

Please click on image to start animation!

[Espen]

Helheim Gletscher update, nothing much happened since last time, but the neighbor glacier Fernisgletscher is in the retreat zone.

[Shared Humanity]

Is that smoke that is obscuring the view on the July image? I first thought it was silt in the water.

[Espen]

SH, No it is ordinary clouds, I know what you are hinting, but smoke is more uniform.

[solartim27]

Espen's post on another topic about Midtgårdgletscher led me to look at what I could see on Sentinel.  I think I'm seeing a big collapse off the front of Helheim.  Any thoughts?
Dates are 1/9, 1/14, 1/16

[Lennart van der Linde]

That looks huge! How many km retreat would that be, in one week?

[solartim27]

Aprevious post said the channel was 6 km wide, so I would ballpark about 6 km.  I also think it might just be sea ice breaking up, and not a real calving event, but I still wouldn't expect to see that in January.

[werther]

Tim, hi,
I posted a detail around Helheim in the 'retreat'-thread. As you can see over there, Helheim glacier  already retreated to just 6 km from the steep slope into the mainland by '09.

What is seen on the Sentinel image illustrates the difficulties in interpreting the different properties of the features on most images. Sentinel is radar, right? I suggest the backscatter would represent the chaotic debris in the fjord as blanketwhite as we imagine a glacier to be.
In summer, MODIS true color provides a better tool to interpret these differences.

Never mind, my first post on Neven's blog was about a swath of meltwater I thought to notice on Kangerdlugssuaq glacier. It turned out to be a shadow from clouds around a nunatakker .