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Report on ASSW 2021 Science session “Theme C: Arctic Climate Dynamics,ID:102 – Arctic Glaciers and Ice Sheets: Past, Present and Future”

Reported by Teruo AOKI (NIPR)
Related research program: Cryosphere

This session was held for contributions for both (i) ice dynamics, mass balance conditions, and glacier-climate processes on Arctic glaciers, ice caps, and the Greenland Ice Sheet, (ii) reconstruction of spatio-temporal patterns of Late Quaternary glacial advances and retreats in the Arctic. However, most of the presentations were concerning the changes in mass balance and energy balance by global warming, and the other was about technical research on dating methods. Notable research is about the record of Alfred Wegener’s Greenland expedition (1929-1931) by Jakob Abermann, which reveals the effects of the early 20th century warm season on surface snow density, reconstructing the valuable past records.

Another excellent talk was a review by Martyn Tranter on Greenland’s biological darkening effects, which lectures the latest research results in this area clearly. For a question on the glacier’s terminus looking brighter than the middle of the glacier, he answered that it was due to runoff of sediment by enhanced melting. It is interesting as a hypothesis for this phenomenon that we are also interested in. We showed the surface heat budget analysis and the estimated snowmelt amount using the data observed at the automatic meteorological station on the Greenland ice sheet and described the relationship with the climate index.