Volume Changes of North American Glaciers by Repeat Airborne Profiling

通过重复机载剖面测量北美冰川的体积变化

• 批准号: 9876421
• 负责人: William Harrison
• 金额: $ 54.48万
• 依托单位: University of Alaska Fairbanks Campus
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 1999
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 1999-03-01 至 2004-02-29
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=9876421&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Volume; Changes; North; American; Glaciers

AbstractOPP-9876421HarrisonEchelmeyerThe main objective of this project is for the Principal Investigator to determine the present mass balance and volume changes, averaged over five years, of about seventy representative glaciers in Alaska, northwestern Canada, and a few in Washington. This area is one of the largest glaciated regions in the world outside the polar regions, but only five to six glaciers out of thousands have been regularly monitored and have long-term records. These balances will be determined by repeating the baseline elevation profiles on the glaciers. The mass balances will be examined in terms of the contribution of the glaciers to sea level rise to determine regional trends in climate change and any possible temporal trends. Historically, mass balances of glaciers and ice sheets are very difficult to measure. This difficulty is particularly true for mountain glaciers because of the complex mountain barriers and the wide variety of climate regimes. Furthermore, satellite rader altimetry has not been used to successfully measure the mass balance of these glaciers because of their large and irregular surface slopes and relatively small areas. An important objective of this project will be to determine the applicability and accuracy of airborne profiling to measure the annual mass balances by making repeated profiles on selected glaciers over the four years of this project.

这个项目的主要目的是让首席研究员确定阿拉斯加、加拿大西北部和华盛顿的70个代表性冰川在过去5年里的平均质量平衡和体积变化。这个地区是世界上除极地地区外最大的冰川地区之一，但在数以千计的冰川中，只有五到六个被定期监测并有长期记录。这些平衡将通过重复冰川的基线高程剖面来确定。将根据冰川对海平面上升的贡献来审查物质平衡，以确定气候变化的区域趋势和任何可能的时间趋势。从历史上看，冰川和冰盖的质量平衡是很难测量的。由于复杂的山地屏障和多种多样的气候条件，山地冰川尤其存在这种困难。此外，由于这些冰川的表面坡度大而不规则，面积相对较小，卫星雷达测高还没有成功地用于测量它们的质量平衡。该项目的一个重要目标是，通过在该项目的四年中对选定的冰川重复制作剖面，确定航空剖面测量年质量平衡的适用性和准确性。