Arctic Ice Shelves and Ice Islands

425 Pages·2017·23.7 MB·English

by  Luke Copland

Springer Polar Sciences
Luke Copland
Derek Mueller
Editors
Arctic Ice
Shelves and
Ice Islands
Springer Polar Sciences
Series editor
James Ford, Department of Geography, McGill University, Montreal, Québec,
Canada
Springer Polar Sciences
Springer Polar Sciences is an interdisciplinary book series that is dedicated to
research on the Arctic and sub-Arctic regions and Antarctic. The series aims to
present a broad platform that will include both the sciences and humanities and to
facilitate exchange of knowledge between the various polar science communities.
Topics and perspectives will be broad and will include but not be limited to
climate change impacts, environmental change, polar ecology, governance, health,
economics, indigenous populations, tourism and resource extraction activities.
Books published in the series will have ready appeal to scientists, students and
policy makers.
More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/15180
Luke Copland • Derek Mueller
Editors
Arctic Ice Shelves and Ice
Islands
Editors
Luke Copland Derek Mueller
Geography, Environment and Geomatics Geography and Environmental Studies
University of Ottawa Carleton University
Ottawa, ON, Canada Ottawa, ON, Canada
ISSN 2510-0475 ISSN 2510-0483 (electronic)
Springer Polar Sciences
ISBN 978-94-024-1099-0 ISBN 978-94-024-1101-0 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-94-024-1101-0
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017940395
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Preface
This book provides an overview of our current state of knowledge of Arctic ice
shelves and related features. Ice shelves are permanent areas of ice which float on
the ocean surface while attached to the coast, and typically occur in very cold envi-
ronments where perennial sea ice builds up to great thickness, and/or where glaciers
flow off the land and are preserved on the ocean surface. These landscape features
are relatively poorly studied in the Arctic, yet they are potentially highly sensitive
indicators of climate change because they respond to changes in atmospheric, oce-
anic and glaciological conditions. Recent fracturing and breakup events of ice
shelves in the Canadian High Arctic (e.g., Ward Hunt Ice Shelf in 2002; Ayles Ice
Shelf in 2005; Serson Ice Shelf in 2008) have attracted large scientific and public
attention, particularly in light of the rapid recent reductions in sea ice that have
occurred across the Arctic. Much has been published about Antarctic ice shelves,
which fringe ~55% of the Antarctic coastline and are far more common than Arctic
ice shelves. However, to date there hasn’t been a dedicated book about Arctic ice
shelves or ice islands. This volume fills that gap.
Part I provides an overview of the general characteristics and distribution of
Arctic ice shelves. Chapter 1 defines what ice shelves are, how and where they form,
and the differences between Arctic and Antarctic ice shelves. Features that are
closely related to Arctic ice shelves, such as ice islands, epishelf lakes, ice rises and
multiyear landfast sea ice are also defined and their significance explained. This is
followed by three chapters describing the distribution of all known Northern
Hemisphere ice shelves in the Canadian Arctic (Chap. 2), Eurasian Arctic (Chap. 3)
and Greenland (Chap. 4).
Part II begins with reviews of the physical processes that are important for ice
shelf growth and retreat. Chapter 5 examines the changes that have occurred in
Canadian Arctic ice shelves over the past century, while Chap. 6 concentrates on the
surface mass balance of the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf, the largest remaining in the
Northern Hemisphere. Following this, Chaps. 7 and 8 explore two approaches to
determining the Holocene history of ice shelves, along with evidence for Arctic ice
shelf presence and absence over this period. Chapter 9 focuses on biological aspects
of Arctic ice shelves, and the unique communities of zooplankton found in epishelf
v
vi Preface
lakes. Ice shelves were once considered as strictly abiotic environments, but are
now known to be a habitat for diverse microbial communities. These organisms are
tolerant of their extreme environment and serve as an analogue for how life survived
and evolved during widespread glaciations on Earth.
Part III focuses on the causes and patterns of Arctic ice shelf calving events, and
the primary features that are produced from these calving events, ice islands. A
discussion of the main mechanisms driving recent Arctic ice shelf losses is the focus
of Chap. 10. This is an area which is currently poorly documented, yet is important
to understand in light of the rapid climate changes occurring in the Arctic. Chapter
11 provides a review of the tracks that previous ice islands have taken across the
Arctic over the last 60 years, and the mechanisms that have driven these drift pat-
terns. Chapter 12 provides detailed insights into recent changes in sea ice conditions
along northern Ellesmere Island, with a focus on semi-permanent ice plugs that
once filled the inter-island channels of the northern Queen Elizabeth Islands and
formed incipient ice shelves. Chapter 13 addresses the strategic military importance
that ice shelves and ice islands had during the Cold War due to their ability to be
used as forward operating bases across the Arctic Ocean. Chapter 14 explores the
Russian historical perspective on ice islands and includes a review of the long-term
use of ice islands as platforms for scientific research stations. Finally, in Chap. 15 a
review of the engineering and risk concerns for the installation and design of oil rigs
and other infrastructure in iceberg-infested waters is presented.
In summary, the book provides the first comprehensive overview of Arctic ice
shelves. The few previous publications in this area have only considered ice shelves
from a single perspective (e.g., Russian drifting stations), and not from the inte-
grated view presented here. The publication of this book is particularly timely given
the large and rapid climate changes that are currently occurring in the Arctic. We
anticipate that upper level undergraduate students will find it useful for Arctic-
themed courses, that graduate students will find it a useful reference for their stud-
ies, and that professors and researchers will find it a useful summary of previous and
ongoing research on Arctic ice shelves and ice islands.
We would like to acknowledge many people for their help and assistance in put-
ting together this book. First, we would like to thank the patience and professional-
ism of all of the chapter authors and co-authors, and for the high quality manuscripts
that they produced. Many anonymous reviewers provided invaluable feedback on
individual chapters, for which we are very grateful, and we particularly wish to
thank Nicole Couture for managing the peer-review for our own first-authored chap-
ters. Our graduate students and others who have joined us during fieldwork on
northern Ellesmere Island over the past 10 years continue to provide a source of
inspiration, including: Canadian Rangers who participated in Operation Nunalivut
in 2008, Andrew Hamilton, Sierra Pope, Colleen Mortimer, Adrienne White, Miriam
Richer McCallum, Tyler de Jong, Nat Wilson, Jill Rajewicz, Kelly Graves, Sam
Brenner, Abigail Dalton, Kevin Xu, Dorota Medrzycka and Greg Crocker. Finally,
Preface vii
we thank our families for their patience and support while we spend long periods of
time away from home on ice shelves and other parts of the cryosphere.
Ottawa, ON, Canada Luke Copland (https://cryospheric.org)
December 2016 Derek Mueller (https://wirl.carleton.ca)
Contents
Part I Distribution and Characteristics of Arctic Ice Shelves
1 Arctic Ice Shelves: An Introduction ...................................................... 3
Julian A. Dowdeswell and Martin O. Jeffries
2 The Ellesmere Ice Shelves, Nunavut, Canada ...................................... 23
Martin O. Jeffries
3 Eurasian Arctic Ice Shelves and Tidewater Ice Margins .................... 55
Julian A. Dowdeswell
4 Greenland Ice Shelves and Ice Tongues ................................................ 75
Niels Reeh
Part II P hysical Processes and Historical Changes
of Arctic Ice Shelves
5 Changes in Canadian Arctic Ice Shelf Extent Since 1906 ................... 109
Derek Mueller, Luke Copland, and Martin O. Jeffries
6 The Surface Mass Balance of the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf
and Ward Hunt Ice Rise, Ellesmere Island, Nunavut, Canada .......... 149
Carsten Braun
7 Holocene History of Arctic Ice Shelves ................................................. 185
John H. England, David A. Evans, and Thomas R. Lakeman
8 An Overview of Paleoenvironmental Techniques
for the Reconstruction of Past Arctic Ice Shelf Dynamics ................... 207
Dermot Antoniades
9 Arctic Ice Shelf Ecosystems .................................................................... 227
Anne D. Jungblut, Derek Mueller, and Warwick F. Vincent
ix
x Contents
Part III Arctic Ice Shelf Calving Processes and Ice Islands
10 Factors Contributing to Recent Arctic Ice Shelf Losses ...................... 263
Luke Copland, Colleen Mortimer, Adrienne White,
Miriam Richer McCallum, and Derek Mueller
11 Ice Island Drift Mechanisms in the Canadian High Arctic ................. 287
Wesley Van Wychen and Luke Copland
12 Recent Changes in Sea Ice Plugs Along the Northern
Canadian Arctic Archipelago ................................................................. 317
Sierra Pope, Luke Copland, and Bea Alt
13 The Military Importance and Use of Ice Islands
During the Cold War .............................................................................. 343
William F. Althoff
14 Russian Drifting Stations on Arctic Ice Islands ................................... 367
Igor M. Belkin and Sergey A. Kessel
15 Risk Analysis and Hazards of Ice Islands ............................................. 395
Mark Fuglem and Ian Jordaan
Index ................................................................................................................. 417