Subglacial Access and Fast Ice Research Experiment (SAFIRE): Resolving the Basal Control on Ice Flow and Calving in Greenland

海洋终止出口冰川排出格陵兰冰盖的88%，并负责至少一半的冰盖的净年质量损失，目前约为200立方公里/年。了解驱动这些冰川快速流动的过程至关重要，因为越来越多的证据表明，对海洋和大气强迫的反应强烈，但空间变化而且往往复杂。虽然已知其他地方的冰川床会强烈影响冰的流动，但从未在格陵兰岛的海洋终止冰川下进行过观测;这是目前海平面上升预测中的重大错误的潜在和可能原因。该项目将通过进入西格陵兰一个主要的海洋终端出口冰川（Store Gletscher）的河床，以观察和测量基底界面，纠正这种观测限制的缺乏。通过在冰床、冰川表面和前缘部署仪器，该项目将完全解决对冰流的基本控制和冰川对冰山崩解的反应，包括融水输入冰床的影响。观测结果将告知冰川对大气和海洋作用力的敏感性，同时也使数值冰流建模具有前所未有的细节和准确性。

Marine-terminating outlet glaciers drain 88% of the Greenland Ice Sheet and are responsible for at least half of the ice sheet's net annual mass loss, which at present is around 200 km3/year. Understanding the processes that drive the fast flow of these glaciers is crucial because a growing body of evidence points to a strong, but spatially varied and often complex, response to both oceanographic and atmospheric forcing. While the bed of glaciers elsewhere is known to strongly influence the flow of ice, no observations have ever been made from beneath a marine-terminating glacier in Greenland; a potential and likely cause of significant error in current predictions of sea level rise. This project will correct this paucity of observational constraint by gaining access to the bed of a major marine-terminating outlet glacier (Store Gletscher) in West Greenland, in order to observe and characterise the basal interface. With instruments deployed at the bed and on the glacier's surface and forefield, the project will fully resolve the basal control on ice flow and the glacier's response to iceberg calving, including the effects of meltwater input to the bed. The observational outcome will inform the glacier's sensitivity to atmospheric as well as oceanographic forcing while also enabling numerical ice flow modelling of unprecedented detail and accuracy.