Climatic control on the peak discharge of glacier outburst floods

Lakes impounded by natural ice dams occur in many glacier regions. Their sudden emptying along subglacial paths can unleash similar to 1 km(3) of floodwater, but predicting the peak discharge of these subglacial outburst floods ('jokulhlaups') is notoriously difficult. To study how environmental factors control jokulhlaup magnitude, we use thermo- mechanical modelling to interpret a 40- year flood record from Merzbacher Lake in the Tian Shan. We show that the mean air temperature during each flood modulates its peak discharge, by influencing both the rate of meltwater input to the lake as it drains, and the lake- water temperature. The flood devastation potential thus depends sensitively on weather, and this dependence explains how regional climatic warming drives the rising trend of peak discharges in our dataset. For other subaerial ice- dammed lakes worldwide, regional warming will also promote higher- impact jokulhlaups by raising the likelihood of warm weather during their occurrence, unless other factors reduce lake volumes at flood initiation to outweigh this effect

Pervasive diffusion of climate signals recorded in ice-vein ionic impurities

A theory of vein impurity transport conceived two decades ago predicts that signals in the bulk concentration of soluble ions in ice migrate under a temperature gradient. If valid, it would mean that some palaeoclimatic signals deep in ice cores (signals from vein impurities as opposed to matrix/grain-boundary impurities) suffer displacements that upset their dating and alignment with other proxies. We revisit the vein physical interactions to show that a strong diffusion prevents such signals from surviving into deep ice. It arises because the Gibbs–Thomson effect, which the original theory had neglected, perturbs the impurity concentration of the vein water wherever the bulk impurity concentration carries a signal. Thus no distinct vein signals will reach a depth where their displacement matters; accordingly, the palaeoclimatic concern posed by the original theory no longer stands. Simulations with signal peaks introduced in shallow ice at the GRIP and EPICA Dome C ice-core sites confirm that rapid damping and broadening eradicates their form by two-thirds way down the ice column; artificially reducing the solute diffusivity in water (to mimic partially-connected veins) by 103 times or more is necessary for signals to penetrate into the lowest several hundred metres with minimal loss of amplitude. The deep solute peaks observed in ice cores can only be explained by widespread vein disconnection or a dominance of matrix/grain-boundary impurities at depth (including their recent transfer to veins); in either case, the deep peaks would not have displaced far. Decomposing the vein and matrix impurity contributions will aid robust reconstruction from ion records

Spatial complexity of ice flow across the Antarctic Ice Sheet

Fast-flowing ice streams carry ice from the interior of the Antarctic Ice Sheet towards the coast. Understanding how ice-stream tributaries operate and how networks of them evolve is essential for developing reliable models of the ice sheet's response to climate change. A particular challenge is to unravel the spatial complexity of flow within and across tributary networks. Here I define a measure of planimetric flow convergence, which can be calculated from satellite measurements of the ice sheet's surface velocity, to explore this complexity. The convergence map of Antarctica clarifies how tributaries draw ice from its interior. The map also reveals curvilinear zones of convergence along lateral shear margins of streaming, and abundant ripples associated with nonlinear ice rheology and changes in bed topography and friction. Convergence on ice-stream tributaries and their feeding zones is uneven and interspersed with divergence. For individual drainage basins, as well as the ice sheet as a whole, fast flow cannot converge or diverge as much as slow flow. I therefore deduce that flow in the ice-stream networks is subject to mechanical regulation that limits flow-orthonormal strain rates. These findings provide targets for ice-sheet simulations and motivate more research into the origin and dynamics of tributarization

Late Amazonian Ice Survival in Kasei Valles, Mars

High obliquity excursions on Mars are hypothesised to have redistributed water from the poles to nourish mid-latitude glaciers. Evidence of this process is provided by different types of viscous flow features (ice-rich deposits buried beneath sediment mantle) located there today, including lobate debris aprons (LDAs). During high obliquity extremes, ice may have persisted even nearer the equator, as indicated by numerous enigmatic depressions bounded on one side by either isolated mesas or scarps, and on the other by a lava unit. These depressions demarcate the past interaction between flowing lava and ghost LDAs (GLDAs), which have long since disappeared. We term these features GLDA depressions, about which little is known besides their spatial extent. This collection of depressions implies tropical ice loss over an area ∼100,000 km2. To constrain their history in Kasei Valles we derive model ages for GLDA depressions, mesas and the lava flow from crater counts. We use a 2D model of glacial ice constrained by the topography of GLDA depressions to approximate the surface and volume of former glacial ice deposits. The model reconstructs former ice surfaces along multiple flowlines orientated normal to GLDA depression boundaries. This reconstruction indicates that 1,400–3,500 km3 of ice—similar to that present in Iceland on Earth—existed at ∼1.3 Ga when the lava was emplaced. Dating shows that GLDAs survived for up to ∼1 billion years following lava emplacement, before their final demise

Isotopic diffusion in ice enhanced by vein-water flow

Diffusive smoothing of signals on the water stable isotopes (18O and D) in ice sheets fundamentally limits the climatic information retrievable from these ice-core proxies. Past theories explained how, in polycrystalline ice below the firn, fast diffusion in the network of intergranular water veins “short-circuits” the slow diffusion within crystal grains to cause “excess diffusion”, enhancing the rate of signal smoothing above that implied by self-diffusion in ice monocrystals. But the controls of excess diffusion are far from fully understood. Here, modelling shows that water flow in the veins amplifies excess diffusion, by altering the three-dimensional field of isotope concentration and isotope transfer between veins and grains. The rate of signal smoothing depends not only on temperature, vein and grain sizes, and signal wavelength, but also on vein-water flow velocity, which can increase the rate by 1 to 2 orders of magnitude. This modulation can significantly impact signal smoothing at ice-core sites in Greenland and Antarctica, as shown by simulations for the GRIP and EPICA Dome C sites, which reveal sensitive modulation of their diffusion-length profiles when vein-flow velocities reach ~ 101–102 m yr–1. Velocities of this magnitude also produce the levels of excess diffusion inferred by previous studies for the Holocene ice at GRIP and ice of Marine Isotope Stage 19 at EPICA Dome C. Thus, vein-flow mediated excess diffusion may help explain the mismatch between modelled and spectrally-derived diffusion lengths in other ice cores. We also show that excess diffusion biases the spectral estimation of diffusion lengths from isotopic signals (by making them dependent on signal wavelength) and the reconstruction of surface temperature from diffusion-length profiles (by increasing the ice contribution to diffusion length below the firn). Our findings caution against using the monocrystal isotopic diffusivity to represent the bulk-ice diffusivity. The need to predict the pattern of excess diffusion in ice cores calls for systematic study of isotope records for its occurrence and improved understanding of vein-scale hydrology in ice sheets

The grain-scale signature of isotopic diffusion in ice

Diffusion limits the survival of climate signals on ice-core isotopic records. Diffusive smoothing acts not only on annual signals near the surface, but also on long time-scale signals at depth as they shorten to decimetres or centimetres. Short-circuiting of the slow diffusion in crystal grains by fast diffusion along liquid veins can explain the “excess diffusion” found on some records. But direct experimental evidence is lacking whether this mechanism operates as theorised; current theories of the short-circuiting also under-explore the role of diffusion along grain boundaries. The nonuniform patterns of isotope concentration across crystal grains induced by the short-circuiting offer a testable prediction of these theories. Here, we extend the modelling for grain boundaries (as well as veins) and calculate these patterns for different grain-boundary diffusivities and thicknesses, temperatures, and vein-water flow velocities. Two isotopic patterns are shown to prevail in ice of millimetre grain size: (i) an axisymmetric “pole” pattern with excursions in δ centred on triple junctions, in the case of thin, low-diffusivity grain boundaries; (ii) a “spoke” pattern with excursions around triple junctions showing the impression of grain boundaries, when these are thick and highly diffusive. The excursions have widths ~ 0.1–0.5 of the grain radius and variations in δ ~ 10–2 to 10–1 of the bulk isotopic signal, which set the minimum required measurement capability for laser-ablation mapping to detect them. We examine how the predicted patterns vary with depth through a bulk-signal wavelength to suggest an experimental procedure of testing ice-core samples for these signatures of isotopic short-circuiting. Because our model accounts for veins and grain boundaries, its predicted enhancement factor (quantifying the level of excess diffusion) characterises the bulk isotopic diffusivity more comprehensively than past studies

Morphology and evolution of supraglacial hummocks on debris‐covered Himalayan glaciers

Thick supraglacial debris layers often have an undulating, hummocky topography that influences the lateral transport of debris and meltwater and provides basins for supraglacial ponds. The role of ablation and other processes associated with supraglacial debris in giving rise to this hummocky topography is poorly understood. Characterising hummocky topography is a first step towards understanding the feedbacks driving the evolution of debris‐covered glacier surfaces and their potential impacts on mass balance, hydrology and glacier dynamics. Here we undertake a geomorphological assessment of the hummocky topography on five debris‐covered glaciers in the Everest region of the central Himalaya. We characterise supraglacial hummocks through statistical analyses of their vertical relief and horizontal geometry. Our results establish supraglacial hummocks as a distinct landform. We find that a typical hummock has an elongation ratio of 1.1:1 in the direction of ice flow, length of 214 ± 109 m and width of 192 ± 88 m. Hummocky topography has a greater amplitude across‐glacier (15.4 ± 10.9 m) compared to along the glacier flow line (12.6 ± 8.30 m). Consequently, hummock slopes are steeper in the across‐glacier direction (8.7 ± 4.3°) than in the direction of ice flow (5.6 ± 4.0°). Longer, wider and higher‐amplitude hummocks are found on larger glaciers. We postulate that directional anisotropy in the hummock topography arises because, while the pattern of differential ablation driving topography evolution is moderated by processes including the gravitational redistribution of debris across the glacier surface, it also inherits an orientation preference from the distribution of englacial debris in the underlying ice. Our morphometric data inform future efforts to model these interactions, which should account for additional factors such as the genesis of supraglacial ponds and ice cliffs and their impact on differential ablation

Multiple sites of recent wet-based glaciation identified from eskers in western Tempe Terra, Mars

Precipitation in Mars' mid-latitudes formed Viscous Flow Features (VFFs), landforms analogous to terrestrial debris-covered glaciers, in the last 1 Gyr. Until recently, the prevailing view was that the Amazonian environment was not conducive to basal melting of VFFs. However, recent identification of VFF-linked eskers (sedimentary ridges deposited by meltwater in sub-glacial tunnels) in Phlegra Montes and Tempe Terra suggests localized basal melting has occurred. We identify two VFF-linked sinuous ridges in western Tempe Terra, which we propose are two additional eskers. To explore this hypothesis, we produce a 1:300,000 map of the geomorphology of western Tempe Terra, use impact crater counts to constrain the age of the sinuous ridges, and analyze the morphology and morphometry of the sinuous ridges. Mapping reveals a heavily deformed Noachian massif that was embayed by younger volcanic material and subsequently glaciated. The sinuous ridges lie 3–7 km from the VFF-termini and are associated with mounds which we interpret as ice-cored moraines. After considering multiple formation hypotheses (including inverted paleochannels and volcanic features) and comparing morphometries to Martian and terrestrial eskers, we suggest that both the sinuous ridges are of glacial origin and most likely eskers. This shows that basal melting of VFFs occurred at more than one location in Tempe Terra, at least transiently. Thus, our identification of two additional candidate eskers in Tempe Terra suggests that the late Amazonian thermal environment may have been more complex than previously thought and contributes to a better characterization of the recent glacial history of the region

In silico analysis of P53 using the P53 knowledgebase: Mutations, polymorphisms, microRNAs and pathways

In Silico Biology7161-75ISBI