Abstracts
SEARCH Open Science Meeting
October 27, 2003
Seattle, Washington, USA
Change in Fresh Water Inflow from Glaciers and Rivers to the Arctic Ocean
Mark B. Dyurgerov1, Yelena L. Pichugina2
1INSTAAR, University of Colorado, 1560 30th Street, Boulder, CO, 80309, USA, Phone 303-492-5800, Fax 303-492-6388, dyurg@tintin.colorado.edu
2Environmental Technology Laboratory, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 325 Broadway, ETL/NOAA, Boulder, CO, 80305, USA, Phone 303-497-6863
We have studied the effect of fresh water inflow from largest pan-Arctic rivers and from subpolar glaciers to the Arctic Ocean from 1961 till the end of twentieth century. We have found that discharge data from major river basins do not provide an integrative measure of freshwater inflow to the Arctic Ocean, because only 8% of melt-water runoff from glaciers have been included to the discharge measurements of river runoff over the pan-Arctic region. We have evaluated melt-water runoff and net contribution (mass balance) from glaciers to the Arctic Ocean and have compared this with the annual river runoff. River runoff has been calculated as the cumulative departure from the 1961-90-reference period.
Compare to this reference period the largest contribution from rivers was observed at the end of 1970's, declined in 1980’s and began increasing again since the mid-1990s. To the contrary of these the net glacier inflow has showed steadily increases since mid-1960s with the acceleration started at the end of 1980s. Increase in both, glacier melt-water production and net inflow show dominant sensitivity to the increases in air temperature. We attribute the change in river inflow to mostly change in annual precipitation over the 50-70°N latitude belt in North America and Eurasia.
Abstract Categories: Changes in the Sea
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