Tidewater glaciers are glaciers that flow down to the ocean and end at the water's edge. They are called "tidewater" because they meet the tides and float on the water.
Full definition
The new study offers hope that scientists could monitor the melting rates
of tidewater glaciers simply by measuring underwater noise in the fjords.
The Yahtse's rogue advance is one stage in what glaciologists call the «
tidewater glacier cycle» — a drama of growth and retreat that unfolds over centuries.
The first part of this Alaska kayak tour visits LeConte Bay and LeConte Glacier, the southernmost
tidewater glacier in North America.
When deciding on our Alaska kayak tour routes, we looked for outstanding natural features, such
as tidewater glaciers, remote wilderness islands, and stunning mountain views.
«Everyone just kind of expected Alaska would lose a substantial fraction of mass from calving,» he said, referring to the loss of ice
from tidewater glaciers.
Further down along the coast, the mountains get smaller and more rounded, and their lush green forms poke over
beautiful tidewater glaciers.
Some problems: It is rather unlikely that glaciers in the study area were
tidewater glaciers because the sea would still be a few hundred m below the glaciers then, as now.
«What we learned [in Alaska]
with tidewater glaciers to some degree we can apply to Greenland and vice versa,» said Motyka.
«We're seeing
more tidewater glaciers retreat,» said glaciologist and team member Fabian Walter of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, in La Jolla, Calif. «As they retreat, they thin, and that increases the likelihood that they'll come afloat.»
This adventure seeks out the most important whale habitats inside Prince William Sound and also
visits tidewater glaciers emerging from the vast Chugach mountain range and forest.
Retreating
tidewater glaciers dominate the Alaskan sea level contribution due to their ability to efficiently transfer mass via iceberg calving [Arendt et al., 2002].
This data set contains
Alaska tidewater glacier terminus positions digitized from USGS topographic maps and Landsat images.
Acceleration and calving of the Columbia Glacier and
other tidewater glaciers in the far north are a large reason glaciers and ice caps are contributing more to sea level rise this century than Greenland and Antarctica, says a new CU - Boulder study.
View the majestic alpine and
tidewater glaciers in College and Harriman Fjord while traveling in luxurious comfort aboard the M / V Klondike Express, the fastest catamaran in Alaska.
«This is the first time that we've assessed all of the glaciers and been able to say how much of the total is coming
from tidewater glaciers, and here's how much of the total is from lake and land glaciers,» Shad O'Neel, a University of Alaska Fairbanks researcher and co-author of the study, said.
The tidewater glacier cycle describes this state of flux.
When the climate warmed in the late 1800s, it triggered the retreat phase of
the tidewater glacier cycle as warm ocean water melted the ice.
Like the Yahtse, the other Icy Bay glaciers are still in flux, undergoing different phases of
the tidewater glacier cycle.
A tidewater glacier named for French geographer and geologist Emmanuel de Margerie (1862 - 1953), it moves from the mountains to the sea.
This tidewater glacier is up to 3,000 feet thick, but it has thinned up to 1,300 feet in places during the past 25 years, and researchers say it's stretching like taffy.
The highlight of the day is a stop at the base of
a tidewater glacier in the hopes of seeing it «calve» - shedding gigantic chunks of ice into the ocean with a thunderous crash.
Part of this kayak tour explores the frigid realm of
a tidewater glacier and its countless icebergs.
This is a great opportunity to see humpback whales, porpoise dolphins and puffins, as well as
the tidewater glaciers.
Trace / Erase Wax and aluminum growler casts Created from ice sourced from the waters of Prince William Sound, Alaska, theses sculptures were cast from melting «growlers» - ice recently calved from
tidewater glaciers.
Artist Statement «Most visitors to Kenai Fjords National Park take a cruise to
the tidewater glaciers that departs from the marina in Seward, Alaska.
The West Antarctic Ice Sheet is also
a tidewater glacier, but more than a thousand times the size of Columbia Glacier.
But
the tidewater glacier situation is one place where it is entirely appropriate, and where a tipping point can be well defined, and in two different ways.
During retreat phase,
a tidewater glacier may retreat on the order of 1 - 2 km yr - 1 concurrent with dramatic increases in ice velocity...»
However, for much of Greenland and Antarctica, ice flow terminates at the ocean, as
a tidewater glacier (not fully afloat) or an ice tongue or ice shelf (fully floating thick permanent ice above the ocean).
Scientists have long studied Alaska's fast - moving Columbia Glacier,
a tidewater glacier that descends through the Chugach Mountains into Prince William Sound.
Among the most comprehensive surveys ever done, it looked at floating glacier - ice shelves, which are connected to the land - based glacier from which they flowed, and
tidewater glaciers that rest on land and break off into the ocean when they reach the water.
For calculating melting at the base of ice shelves and the fronts of
tidewater glaciers, we need better estimates of ice roughness represented in models by a «drag coefficient.»
The study of Columbia Glacier,
a tidewater glacier, shows the first detailed observation of a glacier undergoing a transition from grounded to floating.