Journal of Glaciology

Rapid warming of the Arctic has accelerated the mass loss of snow and ice. The glacier equilibrium line altitude (ELA) is a suitable location for monitoring the surface energy balance (SEB) and surface mass balance (SMB). This study presents SEB and SMB variations during 2012–2022 around the ELA on the Qaanaaq Ice Cap in northwest Greenland. The SMB was analyzed using SEB analysis and the surface…

Seasonal glacier dynamics are key to predicting hazards and glacier stability due to short-term events as well as improving glacier models. However, the short-term ice velocity variations remain poorly constrained for slow-moving glaciers in the Himalaya due to the scarcity of in situ observations and limitations of satellite data and methods. We present seasonal velocity variations of Drang Drun…

Meltwater drainage through glaciers strongly influences ice dynamics and related hazards, yet detailed observations of active englacial and subglacial networks remain scarce due to challenges in direct observation. We present a novel high-density, UAV-based 3D ground-penetrating radar (GPR) survey of Switzerland’s Otemma Glacier, integrated with dye tracing experiments, photogrammetry and hydraul…

Since the first glacier-wide mass-balance measurement on Gara Glacier (India) in 1974, researchers have monitored 38 glaciers across the Himalaya. These glaciers show a mean wastage of −0.62 ± 0.33 m w.e. a ‒1 , equivalent to a cumulative mass loss of −23.95 ± 1.44 m w.e. over 1974‒2023. The wastage strongly increased from −0.31 ± 0.34 m w.e. a ‒1 pre-2000 to −0.66 ± 0.33 m w.e. a ‒1 post-2000, i…

Glaciers surrounding the Gulf of Alaska contain records of past climate. However, interpreting records from the region’s interior vs maritime mountain ranges is challenging, partly due to uncertainties in air transport associated with snowfall. Here, we combine in situ snow accumulation data and back trajectory modeling to examine air-parcel trajectories associated with snowfall in the St. Elias …

Strain rate and stress are widely regarded as crucial indicators for quantifying glacier dynamics on sub-monthly scales. However, existing frameworks for quality assessment of both strain rate and stress in fast-moving glaciers remain insufficient, hindering the application of rheological analysis to complex dynamic natural processes. To address this gap, we first extract and evaluate the surface…

The Radio Neutrino Observatory-Greenland (RNO-G, at Summit Station) experiment comprises an extensive fat-dipole antenna array deployed into ice boreholes over an eventual area of approximately 35 km 2 . Since the RNO-G experimental sensitivity depends on the radio-frequency properties of the firn, which are known to vary laterally on sub-km distance scales and vertically on sub-meter distance sc…

Glacier mass-balance modelling relies on parameterizations to distribute meteorological variables such as precipitation and air temperature over glacier surfaces. However, meteorological observations at the highest altitudes are sparse, particularly outside of Europe, which presents challenges for glacier modelling in high-altitude regions such as the central Himalaya. This study utilizes a dense…

Quantifying micromechanical and microstructural properties of snow is crucial, as they control bulk thermal, electrical and mechanical properties. Snow density can provide an estimate of mechanical properties, while direct observation of snow microstructure is necessary to determine mechanical properties. We utilized a novel non-contacting laser ultrasound system, providing high-frequency acousti…

Understanding ice flexural behavior is essential for assessing interactions with structures in cold environments. The mechanical response of ice depends on microstructural properties, such as grain size and porosity, which vary widely in natural ice. Existing bending test data often lack detailed microstructural characterization, making it difficult to interpret or generalize the results. In brit…

Glacial lakes are increasing in number and size worldwide, posing growing risks for outburst floods. Norway’s last glacial lake inventory used semi-automatic mapping on Sentinel-2 imagery from 2018–19. In this study, we test a more automated and reproducible workflow for updating glacial lake extents in Norway using Sentinel-2 and Sentinel-1 satellite imagery and a Random Forest classifier. Here,…

Increased occurrence of high melt summers across Arctic ice caps and the Greenland Ice Sheet creates thicker, more numerous ice layers within the near surface snow and firn of their accumulation zones. Ice layers may reduce vertical percolation of surface meltwater, promote lateral runoff, reduce refreezing at depth in underlying snow and firn promoting a positive feedback towards more negative s…

Significant and widespread surface melt is prevalent across glaciers and ice caps, and such surface melt is transmitted through complex supraglacial pathways. The efficiency with which this water transits across glaciers and ice caps is important since it is by these networks that water is removed from the system, constituting mass loss. Here, we use remote sensing to explore mass loss of the Bar…

Dynamic surface loads generate stress waves in snow that can trigger slab avalanches. Previously, we determined Maxwell-viscoelastic model parameters from one-dimensional, homogeneous laboratory experiments resembling Compression Tests (CTs). Building off this, we extend the laboratory experiments and modeling effort to layered and two-dimensional configurations that resemble CTs and Extended Col…

Continued deglaciation in the Bolivian Andes threatens regional water security and may result in increased exposure to geohazards. We analyse high spatial resolution (∼3–5 m) satellite imagery to constrain annual glacier and glacial lake evolution across the Bolivian Andes between 2016 and 2022. The total glaciated area of the region decreased by 9.1%, from 316.6 ± 3.2 km 2 to 287.8 ± 2.9 km 2 ; …

Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego (Austral Andes) are the most glacierised regions in the Southern Hemisphere, where glaciers have experienced significant mass changes in recent decades. Understanding glacier–climate–water interactions is crucial for addressing future climate challenges. Open-access data play a key role in advancing geoscience research, improving models and assessing the impacts of …

The grounding zones of Antarctic ice shelves are among the continent’s most dynamic regions, where floating ice shelves buttress grounded upstream ice and tidal forcing drives cyclic flexure at the ice–ocean–bed interface. We use ICESat-2 altimetry and airborne ice-penetrating radar to constrain the effective Young’s modulus E* of ice in the flexure zone at three sites on the Ross Ice Shelf. By m…

Quarrying is a significant, locally dominant glacial erosion process. For settings where glaciers cut into partially intact bedrock, prior work has hypothesized that it occurs when glaciers impose spatially concentrated loads to drive fracture growth in the underlying rock, linking pre-existing fractures to complete dislodgment. This prior work, however, has not rigorously explained how most of t…

Compared to land-terminating glaciers, lake-terminating glaciers generally experience a higher mass loss due to the feedback from processes such as calving, dynamic thinning and flow acceleration associated with proglacial lakes. These processes often result in substantial changes in glacier length. We analyzed the evolution of the Jiongpu Co lake-terminating glacier on the Tibetan Plateau betwee…

The near-surface weathering crust is a thin (<0.5 m), low density ice layer that develops on glacier surfaces during the ablation season and is formed by internal melting driven by the penetration of shortwave radiation (SWR) into polycrystalline glacier ice. This ‘photic zone’ hosts microbial communities, mediates biogeochemical processes and routes meltwater to the channelised supraglacial drai…