Portable laboratory for the study of ice-oceans interactions

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In 2007, the 4th IPCC Assessment recognized that the prime factor limiting public confidence in predicting future changes in sea level from changes in the worlds' ice masses is a poor understanding of the complex behavior of outlet glaciers and of their vulnerability to ocean and atmospheric warming. This laboratory will address some of these uncertainties by providing the means for achieving new insights into a) the role of ice-ocean interactions in outlet glacial systems and their impact on the mass balance of the ice masses that feed them, and b) the role of regional moisture and temperature variability on glacier health. The equipment will be used to collect a range of glaciologic and oceanographic data in the field, including physical measurements of ice motion, glacier mass balance, ice front melting, meltwater runoff, sediment production and seawater circulation, as well as sub-bottom profiles of the seabed for sediment fluxes and the preserved record of glacial activity. This research will take advantage of temperate and polar glaciers in Patagonia, Greenland, the Canadian Arctic and coastal British Columbia/Alaska, to generate insight likely to improve understanding of the processes that affect the stability of ice masses terminating in the sea worldwide, and to predict their evolution in a warmer climate. For the next few centuries, the retreat of these outlet glaciers will dominate global sea-level rise, and yet their fluctuations are only partly related to climate variability, and remain poorly understood.