Dynamics and Change of Canadian Arctic Glaciers

超过6亿人生活在当前海平面10米以内，2.7亿人和13万亿美元的美国资产暴露在100年一遇的极端海平面之下。了解海平面将以多快的速度上升(以及为什么上升)，对于如何/何时/是否应对这一威胁至关重要，这种威胁很大程度上是由世界冰盖和冰川融化造成的。除格陵兰岛和南极洲外，加拿大伊丽莎白女王群岛(QEI)冰川面积占全球总面积的19%。如果这些冰川和冰盖完全融化，全球平均海平面将上升10厘米以上。2003至2009年间，这些冰川每年向全球海洋增加约600亿吨水，相当于海平面上升0.16毫米。这段时间的冰川融化速度可能是4000多年来最高的，接近大约9000年前全新世最热时期的冰川融化速度。这些高融化速率归因于2005年后夏季的强烈变暖，与该地区异常持续的高压系统有关。我的研究计划旨在记录QEI冰川变化的近期历史及其对全球平均海平面的影响，确定这种变化发生的过程和控制变化速度的因素，并发展预测我们未来可能预期的变化速度的能力。

Over 600 million people live within 10m elevation of current sea level, and 270 million people and $13 trillion US of assets are exposed to the 1 in 100 year extreme sea level. Understanding how rapidly sea level will rise (and why) is critical for decision making about how/when/whether to respond to this threat, much of which results from melting of the world’s ice sheets and glaciers. Canada’s Queen Elizabeth Islands (QEI) contain 19% of the world’s glaciated area outside Greenland and Antarctica. If these glaciers and ice caps melted completely, global average sea level would rise by over 10 cm. Each year between 2003 and 2009, these glaciers added about 60 billion tons of water to the global ocean, equivalent to 0.16 mm of sea level rise. Glacier melt rates during this period were probably the highest in over 4000 years, and they approached rates last encountered during the Holocene thermal maximum ~9000 years ago. These high melt rates are attributable to strong summer warming after 2005, linked to unusually persistent high pressure systems over the region. My research program aims to document the recent history of glacier change in the QEI and its implications for global average sea level, to identify the processes by which this change is occurring and the factors that control the rate of change, and to develop the capability to predict what rates of change we might expect in future.