A team of international researchers has shown for the first time how 18 meltwater lakes in Greenland collapse during winter, which causes the edges of the ice to flow faster. The new knowledge is essential for understanding how climate change influences the flow of ice masses in the Arctic.
In the middle of winter in 2018, an almost 50-year-old meltwater lake disappeared from the ice sheet in western Greenland. The lake was covered by snow and ice when it collapsed but stored liquid water inside. The water disappeared into newly formed cracks and drifted down through the approximately 2 km thick layer of ice. The water hit the rock bed under the ice and flowed out from under the ice sheet toward the sea.
This meltwater acted as lubrication between the rock bed and the thick ice on top. As a result, the large mass of ice could slide faster toward the coast, accelerating an unusually large region of inland ice. The drainage of this lake caused several other lakes in the adjacent area to collapse too. In total, the collapsed lakes have released approximately 180 million tons of meltwater that has ended up in the world’s oceans.
This activity is shown by new international research based on satellite data and led by the French Université Grenoble Alpes with contributions from DTU Space at The Technical University of Denmark (DTU). The study has just been published in Geophysical Research Letters.
“The meltwater lakes on the ice sheet form in the summer when the ice on the surface melts. It is well known that these lakes can collapse and drain during summer. But, surprisingly, this takes place in the winter too. This is the first time that it has been shown that these specific lake drainages cause large ice accelerations during winter when temperatures are very low,” says postdoc and researcher Nathan Maier, lead author of the article.
As a researcher at the Université Grenoble Alpes in France, he led the extensive international research collaboration behind the discovery. He is now a researcher at Los Alamos National Laboratory in the U.S.
“In total, the lakes drained in connection with this incident have resulted in 180 million tons of water flowing into the sea. This is roughly equivalent to the contents of 80,000 Olympic swimming pools measuring 50 by 25 by 2 meters,” states Nathan Maier.
The 50-year-old lake, which was the first to drain, was located approximately 160 km inland, high on the ice sheet. The lake consisted of melted water and had a frozen ice lid because of the cold winter temperatures. When it collapsed, and the water flowed underneath the ice toward the coast of western Greenland, it started a cascade of events that caused other lakes to be drained of their water too. Among other things, the pressure from the water that ran under the ice from the 50-year-old lake probably helped to form further cracks in the ice above, making these lakes leak as well.
18 lakes drained in an area about three times the size of greater London
A total of 18 lakes collapsed accelerating a 5,200 square kilometers area of the ice sheet, corresponding to more than three times the size of greater London. The researchers note that it happened across a month in the winter of 2018 when air temperatures were below freezing.
“We have only investigated a limited area, but we have good reason to assume that similar events take place in many more places in Greenland. If this applies to larger parts of the ice sheet, it could be quite large amounts of meltwater that disappear in this way and cause the ice sheet to slide faster towards the sea,” says Jonas Kvist Andersen, a postdoctoral researcher at DTU Space in Denmark and co-author of the article.
The investigated area primarily includes the large Jakobshavn Isbræ, which flows into the sea in western Greenland and is the fastest flowing glacier in the world, as well as a smaller glacier south of it that ends on land.
Unknown if winter drainages will become more prevalent
It seems obvious to conclude that the lakes have started to collapse in winter due to global warming. Especially when an almost 50-year-old lake is suddenly drained in the middle of winter and the meltwater ends up in the sea and contributes to sea level rise. But that is not a given, according to the researchers.
“It is still unknown if drainages like these will become more prevalent in a warmer future and then contribute further to ice sheet mass loss. More research is needed to get a better understanding of the mechanisms, or triggers, that cause the lakes to drain,” says Nathan Maier.
“Right now, our understanding of how surface melting will affect mass loss from Greenland in the future is based entirely on the assumption that melting only affects the speed of the ice flow during summer. Our discovery, that large accelerations in the ice flow caused by stored meltwater that drains during winter, significantly changes how we understand ice sheet hydrology over annual time scales.”
The researchers have arrived at the new results by analyzing large amounts of radar data and satellite optical images.
Winter meltwater drain should be included in new climate models
It is not only the oldest lakes that collapse after existing for decades. There are several types of cycles, according to the scientists. Some lakes form and collapse within a year; for others, it happens every few years.
The collapsed lakes affect the ice sheet, or glacier, melting in Greenland in several ways. The water from the lakes ends up in the sea. The water lubricates the ice sheets from beneath causing them to slide faster towards the coast exposing them to additional melting. In addition, the structure of the enormous ice masses changes. There could be other mechanisms at play as well.
“It is essential to describe what happens when the melting process takes place in winter so that this knowledge can be included in future models for climate change,” states Jonas Kvist Andersen.
Draining lakes and waterflow found with radar data and satellite optical images
The researchers have used Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) interferometry based on data from the Sentinel-1 satellites from the European Space Agency (ESA) to map how the 18 lakes on the ice sheet in western Greenland have been drained, and how the water from them has subsequently flowed downwards and out to sea.
Visual and optical photos have been retrieved from other European and US satellites. They have been used to identify the lakes and their change over a few months in the winter of 2018. The radar images have been supplemented with photos from older satellites. In this way, it was possible for the scientists to follow the development of the lakes over several decades, including establishing when they were drained.
The Sentinel-1 satellites, which cover the Arctic from an orbit just under 700 km above Earth, have a SAR unit, which sends radar signals obliquely down towards the surface of the ice sheet, from where they are returned to the satellite.
By analyzing differences and displacements in the radar signal phase, it is possible to measure the movement of the ice surface relative to the satellite. When several measurements are compared, a distinction can be made between horizontal movement (when the ice flow is accelerated) and vertical movement (when the meltwater pushes the overlying ice upwards).
This way, information is obtained about the movement of the meltwater and the ice after the water has drained from the bottom of the lake.
More information:
Nathan Maier et al, Wintertime supraglacial lake drainage cascade triggers large‐scale ice flow response in Greenland, Geophysical Research Letters (2023). DOI: 10.1029/2022GL102251
Citation:
Lakes collapse and release meltwater during winter causing inland ice to speed up in Greenland, finds study (2023, February 21)
retrieved 21 February 2023
from https://phys.org/news/2023-02-lakes-collapse-meltwater-winter-inland.html
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VICTORIA – The British Columbia government is partnering with a bear welfare group to reduce the number of bears being euthanized in the province.
Nicholas Scapillati, executive director of Grizzly Bear Foundation, said Monday that it comes after months-long discussions with the province on how to protect bears, with the goal to give the animals a “better and second chance at life in the wild.”
Scapillati said what’s exciting about the project is that the government is open to working with outside experts and the public.
“So, they’ll be working through Indigenous knowledge and scientific understanding, bringing in the latest techniques and training expertise from leading experts,” he said in an interview.
B.C. government data show conservation officers destroyed 603 black bears and 23 grizzly bears in 2023, while 154 black bears were killed by officers in the first six months of this year.
Scapillati said the group will publish a report with recommendations by next spring, while an independent oversight committee will be set up to review all bear encounters with conservation officers to provide advice to the government.
Environment Minister George Heyman said in a statement that they are looking for new ways to ensure conservation officers “have the trust of the communities they serve,” and the panel will make recommendations to enhance officer training and improve policies.
Lesley Fox, with the wildlife protection group The Fur-Bearers, said they’ve been calling for such a committee for decades.
“This move demonstrates the government is listening,” said Fox. “I suspect, because of the impending election, their listening skills are potentially a little sharper than they normally are.”
Fox said the partnership came from “a place of long frustration” as provincial conservation officers kill more than 500 black bears every year on average, and the public is “no longer tolerating this kind of approach.”
“I think that the conservation officer service and the B.C. government are aware they need to change, and certainly the public has been asking for it,” said Fox.
Fox said there’s a lot of optimism about the new partnership, but, as with any government, there will likely be a lot of red tape to get through.
“I think speed is going to be important, whether or not the committee has the ability to make change and make change relatively quickly without having to study an issue to death, ” said Fox.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 9, 2024.
The European Space Agency is fast-tracking a new mission called Ramses, which will fly to near-Earth asteroid 99942 Apophis and join the space rock in 2029 when it comes very close to our planet — closer even than the region where geosynchronous satellites sit.
Ramses is short for Rapid Apophis Mission for Space Safety and, as its name suggests, is the next phase in humanity’s efforts to learn more about near-Earth asteroids (NEOs) and how we might deflect them should one ever be discovered on a collision course with planet Earth.
In order to launch in time to rendezvous with Apophis in February 2029, scientists at the European Space Agency have been given permission to start planning Ramses even before the multinational space agency officially adopts the mission. The sanctioning and appropriation of funding for the Ramses mission will hopefully take place at ESA’s Ministerial Council meeting (involving representatives from each of ESA’s member states) in November of 2025. To arrive at Apophis in February 2029, launch would have to take place in April 2028, the agency says.
This is a big deal because large asteroids don’t come this close to Earth very often. It is thus scientifically precious that, on April 13, 2029, Apophis will pass within 19,794 miles (31,860 kilometers) of Earth. For comparison, geosynchronous orbit is 22,236 miles (35,786 km) above Earth’s surface. Such close fly-bys by asteroids hundreds of meters across (Apophis is about 1,230 feet, or 375 meters, across) only occur on average once every 5,000 to 10,000 years. Miss this one, and we’ve got a long time to wait for the next.
When Apophis was discovered in 2004, it was for a short time the most dangerous asteroid known, being classified as having the potential to impact with Earth possibly in 2029, 2036, or 2068. Should an asteroid of its size strike Earth, it could gouge out a crater several kilometers across and devastate a country with shock waves, flash heating and earth tremors. If it crashed down in the ocean, it could send a towering tsunami to devastate coastlines in multiple countries.
Over time, as our knowledge of Apophis’ orbit became more refined, however, the risk of impact greatly went down. Radar observations of the asteroid in March of 2021 reduced the uncertainty in Apophis’ orbit from hundreds of kilometers to just a few kilometers, finally removing any lingering worries about an impact — at least for the next 100 years. (Beyond 100 years, asteroid orbits can become too unpredictable to plot with any accuracy, but there’s currently no suggestion that an impact will occur after 100 years.) So, Earth is expected to be perfectly safe in 2029 when Apophis comes through. Still, scientists want to see how Apophis responds by coming so close to Earth and entering our planet’s gravitational field.
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“There is still so much we have yet to learn about asteroids but, until now, we have had to travel deep into the solar system to study them and perform experiments ourselves to interact with their surface,” said Patrick Michel, who is the Director of Research at CNRS at Observatoire de la Côte d’Azur in Nice, France, in a statement. “Nature is bringing one to us and conducting the experiment itself. All we need to do is watch as Apophis is stretched and squeezed by strong tidal forces that may trigger landslides and other disturbances and reveal new material from beneath the surface.”
The Goldstone radar’s imagery of asteroid 99942 Apophis as it made its closest approach to Earth, in March 2021. (Image credit: NASA/JPL–Caltech/NSF/AUI/GBO)
By arriving at Apophis before the asteroid’s close encounter with Earth, and sticking with it throughout the flyby and beyond, Ramses will be in prime position to conduct before-and-after surveys to see how Apophis reacts to Earth. By looking for disturbances Earth’s gravitational tidal forces trigger on the asteroid’s surface, Ramses will be able to learn about Apophis’ internal structure, density, porosity and composition, all of which are characteristics that we would need to first understand before considering how best to deflect a similar asteroid were one ever found to be on a collision course with our world.
Besides assisting in protecting Earth, learning about Apophis will give scientists further insights into how similar asteroids formed in the early solar system, and, in the process, how planets (including Earth) formed out of the same material.
One way we already know Earth will affect Apophis is by changing its orbit. Currently, Apophis is categorized as an Aten-type asteroid, which is what we call the class of near-Earth objects that have a shorter orbit around the sun than Earth does. Apophis currently gets as far as 0.92 astronomical units (137.6 million km, or 85.5 million miles) from the sun. However, our planet will give Apophis a gravitational nudge that will enlarge its orbit to 1.1 astronomical units (164.6 million km, or 102 million miles), such that its orbital period becomes longer than Earth’s.
It will then be classed as an Apollo-type asteroid.
Ramses won’t be alone in tracking Apophis. NASA has repurposed their OSIRIS-REx mission, which returned a sample from another near-Earth asteroid, 101955 Bennu, in 2023. However, the spacecraft, renamed OSIRIS-APEX (Apophis Explorer), won’t arrive at the asteroid until April 23, 2029, ten days after the close encounter with Earth. OSIRIS-APEX will initially perform a flyby of Apophis at a distance of about 2,500 miles (4,000 km) from the object, then return in June that year to settle into orbit around Apophis for an 18-month mission.
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Furthermore, the European Space Agency still plans on launching its Hera spacecraft in October 2024 to follow-up on the DART mission to the double asteroid Didymos and Dimorphos. DART impacted the latter in a test of kinetic impactor capabilities for potentially changing a hazardous asteroid’s orbit around our planet. Hera will survey the binary asteroid system and observe the crater made by DART’s sacrifice to gain a better understanding of Dimorphos’ structure and composition post-impact, so that we can place the results in context.
The more near-Earth asteroids like Dimorphos and Apophis that we study, the greater that context becomes. Perhaps, one day, the understanding that we have gained from these missions will indeed save our planet.
Astronomy PhD candidate Veronika Dornan served as the astronomer in residence at Killarney Provincial Park. She’ll be back again in October when the nights are longer (and bug free). Dornan has delivered dozens of talks and shows at the W.J. McCallion Planetarium and in the community. (Photos by Veronika Dornan)
BY Jay Robb, Faculty of Science
July 16, 2024
Veronika Dornan followed up the April 8 total solar eclipse with another awe-inspiring celestial moment.
This time, the astronomy PhD candidate wasn’t cheering alongside thousands of people at McMaster — she was alone with a telescope in the heart of Killarney Provincial Park just before midnight.
Dornan had the park’s telescope pointed at one of the hundreds of globular star clusters that make up the Milky Way. She was seeing light from thousands of stars that had travelled more than 10,000 years to reach the Earth.
This time there was no cheering: All she could say was a quiet “wow”.
Dornan drove five hours north to spend a week at Killarney Park as the astronomer in residence. part of an outreach program run by the park in collaboration with the Allan I. Carswell Observatory at York University.
Dornan applied because the program combines her two favourite things — astronomy and the great outdoors. While she’s a lifelong camper, hiker and canoeist, it was her first trip to Killarney.
Bruce Waters, who’s taught astronomy to the public since 1981 and co-founded Stars over Killarney, warned Dornan that once she went to the park, she wouldn’t want to go anywhere else.
The park lived up to the hype. Everywhere she looked was like a painting, something “a certain Group of Seven had already thought many times over.”
The dome telescopes at Killarney Provincial Park.
She spent her days hiking the Granite Ridge, Crack and Chikanishing trails and kayaking on George Lake. At night, she went stargazing with campers — or at least tried to. The weather didn’t cooperate most evenings — instead of looking through the park’s two domed telescopes, Dornan improvised and gave talks in the amphitheatre beneath cloudy skies.
Dornan has delivered dozens of talks over the years in McMaster’s W.J. McCallion Planetarium and out in the community, but “it’s a bit more complicated when you’re talking about the stars while at the same time fighting for your life against swarms of bugs.”
When the campers called it a night and the clouds parted, Dornan spent hours observing the stars. “I seriously messed up my sleep schedule.”
She also gave astrophotography a try during her residency, capturing images of the Ring Nebula and the Great Hercules Cluster.
A star cluster image by Veronika Dornan
“People assume astronomers take their own photos. I needed quite a lot of guidance for how to take the images. It took a while to fiddle with the image properties, but I got my images.”
Dornan’s been invited back for another week-long residency in bug-free October, when longer nights offer more opportunities to explore and photograph the final frontier.
She’s aiming to defend her PhD thesis early next summer, then build a career that continues to combine research and outreach.
“Research leads to new discoveries which gives you exciting things to talk about. And if you’re not connecting with the public then what’s the point of doing research?”
