EGU24-16268, updated on 28 Feb 2025
https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu24-16268
EGU General Assembly 2024
© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Atmospheric drivers of the rapid decline of Novaya Zemlya's glaciers
- 1Geosciences and Remote Sensing, Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands (j.m.haacker@tudelft.nl)
- 2Climatologie et Topoclimatologie, Liège université, Liège, Belgium
- 3Department of Glaciology and Climate, Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland (GEUS), Copenhagen, Denmark
- 4School of Geographical Sciences, University of Bristol, Bristol, Great Britain
- 5Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Research, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands
The glaciers on the High Russian Arctic archipielago Novaya Zemlya have been losing roughly 10 Gt/yr over the past decade, 5 Gt/yr more than in the one before. While earlier research pointed to ocean discharge as driver of the acceleration, we present new results that show that foehn events, triggered by atmospheric rivers, led to the most severe melt events in the recent times. We use output of the regional atmospheric model MAR, together with geodetic observations from CryoSat-2, and reanalysis data (CARRA, ERA5, MERRA-2) to show that roughly 70 % of the melt occurs during atmospheric rivers episodes. Between 1990 and 2022, 45 of the 54 days with more than 1 Gt melt were accompanied by foehn winds. We conclude that the representation of atmospheric rivers and foehn winds in models is crucial for accurate projections of the future glacier evolution.
How to cite: Haacker, J., Wouters, B., Fettweis, X., Box, J., and Glissenaar, I.: Atmospheric drivers of the rapid decline of Novaya Zemlya's glaciers, EGU General Assembly 2024, Vienna, Austria, 14–19 Apr 2024, EGU24-16268, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu24-16268, 2024.
