Domino Jones

Greenlandic tidewater glacier response to long-term climate

Name: Domino Jones
Primary Supervisor: Prof. Douglas Mair
Year: 2
Discipline: Glaciology
Presentation type: Poster
Project Title: Greenlandic tidewater glacier response to long-term climate

Abstract:

50% of mass loss from the Greenland Ice Sheet in recent decades is due to calving from tidewater glaciers (TWG). However, the relationship between climate and calving remains uncertain. While calving parameters in glacier models can replicate observed glacier retreat, they need validation against longer-term records of ice margin advance and retreat. By contextualizing a Greenlandic TWG over centennial to millennial timescales, we can minimize the impact of short-term climate variations and assess if modelled climate-glacier interactions are biased toward retreat due to processes operating over decadal timescales. Our model is validated against a well-constrained millennial-scale record of advance and retreat from a fast-flowing TWG in southwest Greenland. Our key research questions are: How do calving laws perform when modelling the advance of a grounded Greenlandic TWG? And how do calving law tuning parameters relate to physical processes, such as climate and fjord geometry?