Increased flow speed on a large East Antarctic outlet glacier due to subglacial floods
Stearns, L.A., B.E. Smith, G.S. Hamilton
Nature Geoscience, 1, doi:10.1038/ngeo356, 2008
1. Byrd Glacier, one of the largest glaciers in East Antarctica, underwent a sudden and short-lived acceleration (of ~10%) between 12/2005 - 2/2007.
2. The acceleration extended along the entire 75-km glacier trunk and its onset coincided with the discharge of about 1.7km3 of water from two large subglacial lakes located about 200km upstream of the grounding line. The deceleration coincided with the flood termination.
3. Our findings provide the first evidence that an active lake drainage system can cause large and rapid changes in glacier dynamics.
4. One implication of this work is that the addition of even a small amount of water to the bottom of a glacier can cause significant acceleration. While the changes taking place on Byrd Glacier are not caused by climate-driven processes, they highlight the sensitivity of glaciers to small changes at their bed.