Acceleration of Glacier Wastage in the Arctic System: Facts, Causes and What to Expect

冰川是北极群岛、岛屿和格陵兰冰盖周围边界地区的普遍特征。供给北方海域的淡水有很大一部分来自泛北极地区的冰川，而且在大多数情况下，这些融水直接排入海洋，而不是排入北极的主要河流。因此，用实测流量计算的陆地水平衡是对真实的水平衡的一个很差的估计。近几十年来，由于气候变暖，北极冰川出现了负质量平衡。径流的这种增加的贡献，在空间和时间上不同于正常的降水引起的河流径流，影响流入北冰洋和其他北方沃茨。这种变化反过来又影响到泛北极地区未来的环境以及全球海平面，对气候、环境、经济和地球圈的变化产生反馈。 这个为期三年的项目包括利用新的数据来源和方法对冰川体积变化和径流进行新的区域综合，从而更好地了解导致冰川流失增加的过程。 这一综述将使科学界更好地了解冰川的作用，并为预测未来的变化提供背景。 拟议研究的智力价值包括：它将提出几个科学学科之间的关系，涉及冰川学，气候学，海洋学，环境变化和其他地球科学。冰川季节平衡将提供关于气候过程，特别是降水的有用信息，并作为北极地区部分地区水文研究的基础。 通过估算冰川消退导致的陆地和海洋之间的融水交换，将有助于我们了解地球引力场和旋转场的变化，以及海洋环流和海平面变化模式。新的分析技术，如模板方法扩展结果的空间，和新的方法来计算尺寸分布，将有助于研究人员在其他领域使用的新工具。拟议研究的广泛意义：这将是第一次对仪器观测期间泛北极冰川变化进行定量分析，并仔细估计准确性。因此，它将对跨学科科学界产生广泛影响。 时间序列结果将作为验证模型结果和预测未来变化的必要数据来源。 这些环境变化将对美国、加拿大、俄罗斯等北极国家的海洋温盐环流、生物区系、当地经济和土著居民生活等北极过程产生显著影响。

Glaciers are ubiquitous features of the Arctic archipelagos, islands, and borderlands around the Greenland Ice Sheet. A significant fraction of the freshwater that feeds the northern seas is derived from glaciers in the pan-Arctic and for the most part, this meltwater discharges directly to the ocean rather than into the major Arctic rivers. Thus, water balance on land, calculated using the gauged discharges, is a poor estimate of the real water balance. Arctic glaciers have had negative mass balances in recent decades due to climate warming. This increasing contribution of runoff, which is spatially and temporally different from normal precipitation-derived river runoff, affects inflow to the Arctic Ocean and other northern waters. This change in turn affects the future environment in the pan-Arctic region as well as global sea level, imposing feedbacks to climate, the environment, the economy, and to change in the geosphere. This three-year project includes new regional syntheses of glacier volume change and runoff using new data sources and methodologies, leading to better understanding of the processes that are causing increased glacier wastage. This synthesis will bring a better understanding of the role of glaciers to the scientific community and provide background for projecting future changes. Intellectual merit of the proposed research includes: It will present the relationship between several scientific disciplines, involving glaciology, climatology, oceanography, environmental change, and other geosciences. Glacier seasonal balances will provide useful information on climate processes, especially precipitation, and as the basis for hydrologic studies in parts of the Arctic region. By estimating the melt-water exchange between land and ocean due to receding glaciers, it will help us to understand the changes in Earth's gravitational and rotational field, as well as ocean circulation and the pattern of sea-level change. New analysis techniques, such as the template method for expanding results spatially, and new ways to calculate size distributions, will contribute new tools for researchers to use in other fields. Broad implication of the proposed research: This will be the first quantitative analysis, with carefully estimated accuracy, of glacier change in the pan-Arctic for the period of instrumental observations. As such, it will have broad impact on the interdisciplinary scientific community. The time-series results will serve as a necessary source of data for validation of model results and projection of future change. These environmental changes will have noticeable effects on Arctic processes, such as ocean thermohaline circulation, biota, local economy and life of indigenous people in USA, Canada, Russia, and other Arctic countries.