Malaspina Glacier: Take 1

 Malaspina Glacier is an amazing place. It is one of the last piedmont (meaning 'foot of the mountain') glaciers in Alaska. That puts a large amount of ice at really low elevation where it is prone to melt rapidly. Previous measurements have shown that much of the lower glacier's bottom is well below sea level, meaning that a retreat would lead to the formation of a large lake or series of lakes, or potentially an ocean bay. In a new proposal funded by the National Science Foundation we are going to explore a number of possible retreat scenarios for the glacier. In the first week of June we did our first trip to establish field instrumentation.

All operations for Malaspina start in Yakutat, a cool coastal town of Alaska with some amazing temperate rain forest.

An interesting part of Yakutat is Cannon Beach, which was fortified against a possible Japanese invasion

The majestic Mt. St.Elias as seen from Yakutat. The sliver of white in front is the mighty Malaspina.

A combined station to measure motion (GPS), melt (via a draw wire) and some basic weather.

And here is St.Elias again, this time from the glacier

Victor is drilling a mass balance stake.

Parts of Malaspina are currently surging, moving at several meters a day. This adds a bit of a challenge!

We put up a weather station near the coast. We'll see what the bears think about that...

And here is the advancing lobe of the surging glacier

Some close-ups of the surge front

And finally, a few shots from the way back from Yakutat from an Alaska Airlines jet in beautiful weather.

This shows the possible ways that Malaspina Glacier could be connected to ocean water.

Muldrow surge

 The Muldrow Glacier surge has been getting a lot of attention with articles in the NY Times and more recently one in the Washington Post. And rightly so: after more than 60 years of a quiet life in the mountains the glacier has sprung into action. There were some tentative signs a few years ago, and I had a previous blog post from flying over it. But then this winter it went really crazy with ice moving faster than 20 m/d, which isn't exactly what we think of when we talk of a glacial pace. 

Two of our graduate students recently spent a few weeks at the glacier doing detailed measurements with a ground-based terrestrial radar. I finally got a chance to look at it myself; here are some photos. It is a pretty spectacular sight.

Very pronounced shear margins with chaotic crevassing

This was a smooth glacier surface just a few months ago

Some (but not all) tributaries are very engaged in the surge

A view into the upper glacier (Traleika junction). Note the ice that is stranded many tens of meters above the glacier surface. This is the surge reservoir area, the part of the glacier that has been building up over decades and is now being depleted in just a few months.

Near the glacier terminus: Ice is building up to impressive heights

The surge front advancing into the glacier forelands

If you look carefully you can spot David and Emily's camp (yellow Arctic Oven) and the terrestrial radar interferometer