Glacier and Permafrost Signals of 20th-Century Warming

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Abstract

Currently-available evidence of 20th-century warming from glaciers and permafrost is briefly reviewed. The signals are clear and strong: warming of polar firn and permafrost, and mass losses of glaciers at lower latitudes, were most striking towards the middle of the century. The easily observable length-reduction of mountain glaciers confirms the global character of the evolution. A probably intermittent reversal of the trend was observed in places after about 1950.

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Glaciological Investigations in the Crête Area, Central Greenland: A Search for a new Deep-Drilling Site

N.S. Gundestrup, H.B. Clausen, J Zwally … (1988)

The results of the 1984-85 post-GISP campaigns in central Greenland are presented. Eight ice cores were obtained, some spanning up to 360 years. We present:I.Geographical positions and elevations at the drill sites,II.Density and temperature in the bore holes,III.Filtered δ18O profiles and accumulation-rate variations along the ice cores.

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Devon island ice cap: core stratigraphy and paleoclimate.

R M Koerner (1977)

Valuable paleoclimatic information can be gained by studying the distribution of melt layers in deep ice cores. A profile representing the percentage of ice in melt layers in a core drilled from the Devon Island ice cap plotted against both time and depth shows that the ice cap has experienced a period of very warm summers since 1925, following a period of colder summers between about 1600 and 1925. The earlier period was coldest between 1680 and 1730. There is a high correlation between the melt-layer ice percentage and the mass balance of the ice cap. The relation between them suggests that the ice cap mass balance was zero (accumulation equaled ablation) during the colder period but is negative in the present warmer one. There is no firm evidence of a present cooling trend in the summer conditions on the ice cap. A comparison with the melt-layer ice percentage in cores from the other major Canadian Arctic ice caps shows that the variation of summer conditions found for the Devon Island ice cap is representative for all the large ice caps for about 90 percent of the time. There is also a good correlation between melt-layer percentage and summer sea-ice conditions in the archipelago. This suggests that the search for the northwest passage was influenced by changing climate, with the 19th-century peak of the often tragic exploration coinciding with a period of very cold summers.