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Abstract
In this study, observed annual mass‐balance data series from 1970 to 2009 for 29 land‐terminating glaciers and ice caps in the northern orth tlantic region are presented to highlight their spatio‐temporal variability. The glaciers and ice caps mass‐balance data are compared with various zonal latitude bands of regional near‐surface air temperature time series, large‐scale atmospheric and oceanic circulation indices, as well as with orth celandic sea‐surface temperature records, since variations in mass‐balance conditions are related both to variations in surface weather conditions and to atmospheric and oceanic circulations. The purpose is to explore statistical and physical relations based on the hypothesis that the general atmospheric and sea‐surface warming trends are potential drivers of the ongoing regional glaciers and ice caps mass change. Our analysis shows that the mean observed northern orth tlantic glaciers and ice caps annual mass balance was mostly negative during the first decade of the twenty‐first century, with a variability in glaciers and ice caps loss from c. 860 mm water equivalent yr–1 for outheast reenland and celand to c. 380 mm water equivalent yr–1 for valbard and candinavia. For celand and candinavia, variations in the orth tlantic oscillation seem to be important for mass‐balance conditions, whereas overall for the entire northern orth tlantic region the mass‐balance time series was significantly correlated with both 's oddard nstitute for Space Studies regional near‐surface air temperature and tlantic multidecadal oscillation time series, individually.
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the Chilean Government through the Centers of Excellence Base Financing Program of CONICYT, the Earth System Modeling program by the Scientific Discovery for Advanced Computing (SciDAC) program within the US Department of Energy's Office of Science and by the Los Alamos National Laboratory. LANL is operated under the auspices of the National Nuclear Security Administration of the US Department of Energy under Contract No. DE‐AC52‐06NA25396, and partly from the European Community's Seventh Framework Programme under grant agreement No. 262693 (project GLAMOSEG‐II). It is also a contribution to the OCEANHEAT project funded by the Danish Council for Independent Research Natural Science (Project No. 12‐126709/FNU), and the EU FP7 project “Past4Future” (Project No. 243908). Thanks are given to reviewers for their valuable comments and to the World Glacier Monitoring Service for providing GIC mass‐balance data. We thank the Icelandic Meteorological Office and Trausti Jonsson for help in updating the NIceSST dataset and data used therein. NASA GISS data can be downloaded from http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata/ZonAnn.Ts+dSST.txt, AMO: http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/data/timeseries/AMO/, NAO: http://gcmd.nasa.gov/records/GCMD_NCAR_NAO.html, and AO: http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/daily_ao_index/ao.shtml.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Sebastian H. Mernild
Sebastian H. Mernild, Ryan Wilson, Glaciology and Climate Change Laboratory, Center for Scientific Studies/Centro de Estudios Cientificos (CECs), Av. Arturo Prat 514, 5110466 Valdivia, Chile
Email: [email protected] and [email protected]
Edward Hanna
Edward Hanna, Department of Geography, University of Sheffield, Sheffield S10 2TN, UK
Email: [email protected]
Jacob C. Yde
Jacob C. Yde, Faculty of Engineering and Science, Høgskulen i Sogn og Fjordane, Postboks 133, 6851 Sogndal, Norway
Email: [email protected]
Marit‐solveig Seidenkrantz
Marit‐Solveig Seidenkrantz, Centre for Past Climate Studies, and Arctic Research Centre, Department of Geoscience, Aarhus University, Høegh‐Guldbergs Gade 2, 8000 Aarhus C, Denmark
Email: [email protected]
Niels Tvis Knudsen
Niels Tvis Knudsen, Department of Geoscience, Aarhus University, Høegh‐Guldbergs Gade 2, 8000 Aarhus C, Denmark
Email: [email protected]