Kangerdluqssuaq Gletscher / Kangerdluqssuaq / East Greenland

[Espen]

Another one of the great glaciers of Greenland, Kangerdluqssuaq Gletscher is showing some sizable calving:

[Espen]

Kangerdluqssuaq Gletscher update:

[Espen]

43 year update Kangerdluqssuaq Gletscher, first image in the animation show the letters T= Thinning and R= Retreat: All images are from September 1972 and 2014.

[Espen]

The debris left over from the calvings at Kangerdluqssuaq Gletscher are pretty impresive, this "tooth" is about 1 km (1000 m) thick:

[Shared Humanity]

As always....thank you for these wonderful detailed views of the destruction.

[Espen]

The speed is up at Kangerdluqssuaq Gletscher, moving at 23 meters per 24 hrs between March 3 and March 28 2015:

[Shared Humanity]

Is that an ice cap on the northeast side of the calving front? If so, would its ongoing melt cause a speedup of the glacier as the cap  recedes from the glacier?

[Espen]

Is that an ice cap on the northeast side of the calving front? If so, would its ongoing melt cause a speedup of the glacier as the cap  recedes from the glacier?

Without knowing, my guess it is pretty grounded there?

[Espen]

Kangerdluqssuaq Gletscher is really on the move these days, moving between 35 and 40 meters / 24 hrs. on average between March 28 and April 4 2015:

[Shared Humanity]

Looking at  this latest image, I am still curious about the ice that is north of the glacier. It looks  as if  this  ice cap? has receded from the glacier where it comes into contact with the water. What appears to be an area of open  water and melange is adjacent to this  ice. It also looks as if the calving front of the glacier is very near where the ice cap? has pulled away from the glacier. Could we expect this edge of the grounded ice cap?, nearest the water, to continue  to  recede  and the calving front to follow?

[oren]

35-40 m/day sounds to me quite impressive, especially at this time of year. Is there any comparison to past speeds?

[Espen]

Looking at  this latest image, I am still curious about the ice that is north of the glacier. It looks  as if  this  ice cap? has receded from the glacier where it comes into contact with the water. What appears to be an area of open  water and melange is adjacent to this  ice. It also looks as if the calving front of the glacier is very near where the ice cap? has pulled away from the glacier. Could we expect this edge of the grounded ice cap?, nearest the water, to continue  to  recede  and the calving front to follow?

You can see the "icecap" receded over the last 43 years here: http://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php/topic,949.msg48349.html#msg48349

[Espen]

35-40 m/day sounds to me quite impressive, especially at this time of year. Is there any comparison to past speeds?

Yes it is an impressive speed especially considering the season. I am also suspecting it to have one of the greatest glacier-ice-thickness in Greenland.

[oren]

According to a 2012 paper by Rignot the speed of Kangerdluqssuaq in 2008-9 was 8.1 km/y, translating to 22 m/day on average

[Espen]

According to a 2012 paper by Rignot the speed of Kangerdluqssuaq in 2008-9 was 8.1 km/y, translating to 22 m/day on average

Maybe that is old news now.
Average / day / year probably is different than average / day / week

[Rubikscube]

I recall seeing similar numbers (8,1k a year) from a 2014 paper linked in the Jakobshavn thread. Maybe its the same measurements, but 35-40 m/day at this time of the year still seems very fast. About a doubling in annual average speed I would presume.

[Espen]

Kangerdluqssuaq Gletscher continues its extreme speed:

[Espen]

Kangerdluqssuaq Gletscher is preparing a serious calving:

[ghoti]

Some people returning to Sweden from the Petermann expedition posted this photo of  Kangerdluqssuaq Gletscher

https://instagram.com/p/7RLvliD5LW/

[Espen]

Kangerdluqssuaq Gletscher update, despite the traditional hibernation for glaciers:

Click on image to enlarge and animate!

[DrTskoul]

Let the calvings proceed...

[Shared Humanity]

Espen. On that animation, what is the nature of the much darker ice that is north of the rapidly moving and dramatically calving ice stream? You can see it calving as well but it seems to be behaving differently.

[magnamentis]

Espen. On that animation, what is the nature of the much darker ice that is north of the rapidly moving and dramatically calving ice stream? You can see it calving as well but it seems to be behaving differently.

that ice seams to be blocked by the topography at it's end on the very right of the image, while the mainstream got detached and flows unhindered.  it's some kind of a narrows.

[Espen]

Espen. On that animation, what is the nature of the much darker ice that is north of the rapidly moving and dramatically calving ice stream? You can see it calving as well but it seems to be behaving differently.

That is bedrock ice!

[Shared Humanity]

Espen. On that animation, what is the nature of the much darker ice that is north of the rapidly moving and dramatically calving ice stream? You can see it calving as well but it seems to be behaving differently.

That is bedrock ice!

Wow! That has to be very thick.

[iwantatr8]

There's been a few changes since we last looked at this:
Change is Jan 2017 to Aug 2018 - Needs a click to animate

For current events:
https://apps.sentinel-hub.com/sentinel-playground/?source=S2&lat=68.60739381143291&lng=-32.784576416015625&zoom=11&preset=1_NATURAL_COL0R&layers=B01,B02,B03&maxcc=95&gain=0.4&gamma=1.0&time=2015-01-01%7C2018-08-04&atmFilter=&showDates=false

[oren]

Wow. That's quite the retreat, ~3km.
An interesting tidbit - there appears to be more snow in August now than there was in January last year.

[Eli81]

An interesting tidbit - there appears to be more snow in August now than there was in January last year.

I noticed this as well.

[Stephan]

Thank you iwantatr for this animation. It is quite a big difference.

[sidd]

Interesting paper at cryosphere-discuss tying recent retreat to warming waters in the fjord. Warns that grounding line is about to retreat over a big hole. "Runaway retreat" is the term used.

Open access, read all about it:

https://www.the-cryosphere-discuss.net/tc-2018-260/

sidd

[Often Distant]

Attached is a gif of calving progress spanning 40 years. It is interesting the movement of the rock debris bending between the two subsidiary glaciers over the last 10 years since their cork was popped. Not sure if the glaciers have names. The second gif is situated further left just out of frame of the first gif, where a smaller subsidiary glacier collapsed in 2017.

[sidd]

Neat. Thanks !

sidd

[oren]

Great animations.
I wish there was an easy way to measure glacier speed/acceleration based on these images.

[Often Distant]

Here's another gif focusing on recent months. Calving still very active in recent days.

It seems to flow at about 29 m/day at a guess.

[oren]

Thanks.
Here is some info and a couple of figures from https://tc.copernicus.org/preprints/tc-2018-260/tc-2018-260-ED2.pdf.

Warming of southeast Greenland shelf waters in 2016 takes large glacier to brink of runaway retreat
Abstract. By the end of 2018 Kangerdluqssuaq Glacier in southeast Greenland had retreated further inland than at any time in the past 80 years and its terminus was approaching a region of retrograde bedslope from where further rapid retreat would have been inevitable. Here we show that the retreat occurred because the glacier failed to advance during the winters of 2016/17 and 2017/18 owing to a weakened proglacial mélange. This mixture of sea ice and icebergs is normally rigid enough to inhibit 5 calving in winter but for two consecutive years it repeatedly collapsed allowing Kangerdlugssuaq Glacier to continue to calve all year round. The mélange break-ups followed the establishment of anomalously warm surface water on the continental shelf during 2016 which likely penetrated the fjord. As calving continued uninterrupted from summer 2016 to the end of 2018 the glacier accelerated by 35% and thinned by 35 m. These observations demonstrate the importance of near-surface ocean temperatures on tidewater glacier stability, and show that it is not only deep-ocean warming that can lead to glacier retreat. 10 During winter 2019 a persistent mélange reformed and the glacier readvanced by 3.5 km.


Assuming the 29 m/d estimate is apples-to-apples with the figures cited, it seems KG has accelerated back near the record levels of 2005-6.

[IceConcerned]

Kangerdluqssuaq glacier just shed a little more than 2km
The glacier front from 2 days ago is represented by the blue line