Transcript Pre-Meeting Materials ESDIS Site Visit, May 2012

Death of the St. Patrick Bay Ice
Caps: An Example of Data Fusion
Mark Serreze, Bruce Raup
National Snow and Ice Data Center, Cooperative Institute for Research in
Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder
My Masters Degree work focused on the energy and mass balances of a pair of
small ice stagnant caps on the Hazen Plateau of NE Ellesmere Island, Nunavut,
Canada (then part of the NWT). They are relics of the Little Ice Age (1600-1850).
Air Photographs, 1959
Areas from August 1959 air
photographs:
• Large ice cap: 7.48 km2
• Small ice cap: 2.93 km2
In the field, 1982
Field work, 1982 and 1983
The stake network
Inserting accumulation stakes
ASTER, air photographs and GPS surveys conducted as part of earlier
field work document progressive shrinking of the ice caps since 1959
The nearby Murray and
Simmons ice caps
Outlines from the 1959 air photo,
GPS helicopter survey (2006) and
from LANDSAT 8 (2015)
By combining data sources we have a 55+ year record of ice cap areas.
Note the accelerating shrinkage of the St. Patrick Bay ice caps. The long
record provides an opportunity to assess processes of revegetation.
Areas
% of 1959 Areas
Strong summer warming, 2000-2015, based on MODIS
Left panel: (a) Red box indicates
location of the study site. (b)
Elevation zones: <1000 m (pink),
1000-1400 m (yellow), >1400 m
(gray). (c) Glacial regions used in
the study: Northwest Ellesmere
Island (orange), Agassiz Ice Cap
(purple), Prince of Wales Icefield
(blue), Manson Icefield (yellow),
Sydkap Ice Cap (blue-green),
Devon Island and Coburg Island
(navy), Axel Heiberg Island (green)
and Meighen Ice Cap (red).
8-d L3 Global Land Surface
Temperature and Emissivity product
(MOD11A2) Version 5
Mortimer et al. (2016), J. Glaciol., doi: 10.1017/jog.2016.80
Shrinkage between 2014 and 2015. Applications
of atmospheric reanalysis products
Comparison to Little Ice Age conditions
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850 hPa temperature anomalies from radiosonde data at nearby station Alert, assuming that LIA
summer temperatures were about 1.25oC higher than today. The anomaly structure is consistent
with the notion that the ice caps have long been out of climate equilibrium and would have
eventually died without our help.
Data Fusion
This study is a good example of “data fusion”.
• ASTER and Landsat-8, in combination with information from air
photographs and GPS surveys are combined to provide a 55+ year record of
ice cap shrinkage.
• MODIS data and atmospheric reanalyses enable an assessment of
associated recent environmental conditions.
• Radiosonde data provide perspective back to the late 1950s
• Paleoclimate information provides a longer-term context
Questions?