Grants and Contributions:

Grant or Award spanning more than one fiscal year. (2017-2018 to 2022-2023)

The central aim of my research program is to quantify and explain the interconnections between recent fluctuations and the dynamics and mass balance of glaciers, ice caps, ice shelves and icebergs in northern Canada. A key gap in our current knowledge is the surface velocity distribution of glaciers, and its temporal variability, which limits our ability to determine their fluxes and iceberg calving rates. Future work will focus on how the motion of these ice masses varies on decadal timescales and their connections to surface mass balance, the role of glacier surging vs. climate forcing in driving these changes, and the significance of ice-ocean interactions in driving glacier changes. Measurements will be based on a combination of remote sensing and field observations, including the operation of new and existing timelapse cameras, weather stations and differential GPS monitoring equipment on western Axel Heiberg Island, eastern Ellesmere Island and SW Yukon. This work will be connected to studies aimed at elucidating the factors that control iceberg production at the fronts of tidewater glaciers, and whether iceberg production rates are changing in response to reductions in sea ice. Investigations of the factors that control ice shelf breakups will involve remote sensing measurement of current glacier mass inputs to the coastline of northern Ellesmere Island, and field determination of the mass balance of the remaining Canadian Arctic ice shelves and its spatial variability.
The results of these analyses will inform work on Arctic shipping patterns and risks, and the factors that control shipping activity in the Canadian Arctic and how this may evolve in a regime of decreasing sea ice. These results will also provide critical information as to how ice masses in the Canadian Arctic are responding to a warming climate, which is required for accurate predictions of sea level rise and their future evolution.