Spatial Patterns of Summer Speedup on South Central Alaska Glaciers

Researchers have identified consistent spatial patterns of summer speedup on glaciers in Alaska's Wrangell-St. Elias Ranges, providing new insights into glacier behavior and potential implications for ice discharge and erosion. The study, which analyzed 13 out of 19 land-terminating glaciers using a novel workflow based on Landsat 8 feature tracking, found that summer speedups are relatively uniform across much of the ablation zones and vary by only a factor of ~2 between glaciers with velocities spanning an order of magnitude. These speedups extend up to ~30 km up glacier from termini and often terminate at the bases of icefalls. The findings suggest the possibility of parameterizing this phenomenon in glacier models, offering a systematic observation of enhanced summer basal motion that could improve our understanding of glacier dynamics.

Armstrong, W. H., Anderson, R. S., & Fahnestock, M. A. (2017). Spatial Patterns of Summer Speedup on South Central Alaska Glaciers. Geophysical Research Letters, 44(18), 9379–9388. Portico. https://doi.org/10.1002/2017gl074370