Cryospheric science articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    The effect of increasing surface melt on annual discharge is unknown for the Greenland Ice Sheet. Here, the authors find that Greenland’s largest single-glacier contributor to sea-level rise accommodates basal floods following supraglacial lake-drainage events with limited impact on ice flow.

    • Laura A. Stevens
    • , Meredith Nettles
    •  & Aaron Stubblefield

  • Article
    | Open Access

    As glaciers terminate into the ocean, mass is lost through frontal ablation where the ice meets the ocean. Here the authors estimate decadal frontal ablation from 2000 to 2020 of 1496 glaciers in the Northern Hemisphere, and find that frontal ablation makes up 79% of ice discharge to the ocean.

    • William Kochtitzky
    • , Luke Copland
    •  & Francisco Navarro

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Melting of the Antarctic Ice Sheet is projected to impose severe costs on Small Island Developing States, and increase the worldwide social cost of carbon emissions, but costs could be reduced dramatically by efficient, proactive coastal planning.

    • Simon Dietz
    •  & Felix Koninx

  • Article
    | Open Access

    This study finds that glaciers have existed in the Transantarctic Mountains for the past 60 million years, and that warm-based mountain glaciers were present in Antarctica long before ice sheets came to dominate the continent.

    • Iestyn D. Barr
    • , Matteo Spagnolo
    •  & Matt D. Tomkins

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Black carbon and dust deposition advanced the end of the snow season by 17 days on average over the last 40 years in the French Alps and the Pyrenees. The warming-induced snow cover decline was partly offset by decreases in black carbon deposition observed since the 1980s.

    • Marion Réveillet
    • , Marie Dumont
    •  & Paul Ginoux

  • Article
    | Open Access

    This study uses ice sheet modeling experiments to show that thawing portions of the Antarctic ice sheet bed can increase century-scale mass loss, particularly in the Wilkes and Enderby Land regions of East Antarctica.

    • Eliza J. Dawson
    • , Dustin M. Schroeder
    •  & Hélène Seroussi

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Under continued global warming, lakes will increasingly be covered by white ice, in particular towards the end of the ice cover season when fatal winter drownings occur most often and light limits the growth and reproduction of primary producers.

    • Gesa A. Weyhenmeyer
    • , Ulrike Obertegger
    •  & Roman Zdorovennov

  • Article
    | Open Access

    We show cryovolcanic eruptions released sufficient methane to source volatile products on Charon. Irradiated methane products are found on other Kuiper belt objects, so endogenically sourced volatiles could be important across the Kuiper belt.

    • Stephanie M. Menten
    • , Michael M. Sori
    •  & Ali M. Bramson

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Snow accumulation rates in Antarctica can now be reconstructed from nitrate isotopes in snow and ice. This independent technique offers scientists a new tool for studying how Antarctic climate changed in the past and how it may change in the future.

    • Pete D. Akers
    • , Joël Savarino
    •  & Jason L. Roberts

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The mechanism driving past Laurentide Ice-Sheet instabilities remains elusive Here, the authors present a sediment record from the subpolar western North Atlantic and show that massive warming of the upper interior ocean was the likely trigger for repeated collapses of the Laurentide Ice-Sheet and iceberg discharge into the North Atlantic, known as Heinrich Events.

    • Lars Max
    • , Dirk Nürnberg
    •  & Stefan Mulitza

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Ice loss from the Amundsen Sea sector of West Antarctica is rapidly accelerating. Here, the authors reveal that this region also underwent thinning and retreat from 9 to 6 thousand years ago, due to atmospheric connections with a warming tropical Pacific.

    • Adam D. Sproson
    • , Yusuke Yokoyama
    •  & Rebecca L. Totten

  • Article
    | Open Access

    New experiments suggest that the Petermann Ice Shelf in northwest Greenland is unlikely to recover once a breakup occurs in the future. If this is not unique to this ice shelf, continued ocean warming may lead to high discharge from polar ice sheets.

    • Henning Åkesson
    • , Mathieu Morlighem
    •  & Martin Jakobsson

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Arctic sea ice extent continues to decline at an unprecedented rate that climate projection models commonly underestimate. In this study, authors reveal a positive feedback between ocean-ice heat fluxes, sea ice cover, and upper-ocean vortices that is missing in coarse-resolution climate models.

    • Georgy E. Manucharyan
    •  & Andrew F. Thompson

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The formation of double ridges on Europa is poorly understood. Here the authors analyze airborne radar observations of an analog feature on the Greenland Ice Sheet to show that the refreezing of shallow water sills may produce such ridges.

    • Riley Culberg
    • , Dustin M. Schroeder
    •  & Gregor Steinbrügge

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Fram Strait is the major gateway connecting the Arctic Ocean and North Atlantic Ocean, where nearly 90% of the sea ice export from the Arctic Ocean takes place. Here, the authors show that in 2018, ice export showed an unprecedented decline since at least the 1990s, attributed to ongoing Arctic-wide ice thinning and regional-scale atmospheric anomalies.

    • Hiroshi Sumata
    • , Laura de Steur
    •  & Olga Pavlova

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Antarctic supraglacial lakes (SGLs) have been linked to ice-shelf collapse and the subsequent acceleration of inland ice flow, but observations of SGLs remain relatively scarce and their interannual variability is largely unknown. This new study shows that lake area and volume vary substantially from year-to-year around the East Antarctic Ice Sheet and between ice shelves.

    • Jennifer F. Arthur
    • , Chris R. Stokes
    •  & Vincent Verjans

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Thawing permafrost releases carbon that serves as a positive feedback on climate warming. Here the authors experimentally demonstrate that rainfall extremes in the Siberian tundra increase permafrost thaw for multiple years, especially if rainfall coincides with warm periods.

    • Rúna Í. Magnússon
    • , Alexandra Hamm
    •  & Monique M. P. D. Heijmans

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The Northern Hemisphere summer circulation in the midlatitudes has become more “meandering” over the past decades, but the cause of the change remains elusive. Here the authors reveal that the waiver trending pattern results from internal climate forcing associated with sea surface temperature low frequency variability over the tropical Eastern Pacific.

    • Xiaoting Sun
    • , Qinghua Ding
    •  & Yihui Ding

  • Article
    | Open Access

    A new metric measuring the exposure of the Antarctic coastline to full open-ocean conditions reveals strong regional and seasonal change and variability occurred over the past four decades due to the loss and/or gain of an offshore sea-ice buffer.

    • P. A. Reid
    •  & R. A. Massom

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The intrusion of relatively warm water is causing the recent rapid thinning of the Dotson ice shelf, West Antarctica. Here, the authors analyzed two-years of mooring data from the Dotson ice shelf front and found that seasonal variability of the ocean circulation and ocean surface stress are the main causes of variability in heat transport.

    • H. W. Yang
    • , T.-W. Kim
    •  & Y.-K. Cho

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The snow surrounding research facilities and shore tourist-landing sites in Antarctica was found to be darker than elsewhere in the continent, which suggests that local emissions of black carbon are accelerating seasonal snowmelt in impacted regions.

    • Raúl R. Cordero
    • , Edgardo Sepúlveda
    •  & Gino Casassa

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Delayed Antarctic sea-ice decline is linked to Southern Ocean eddies - and their explicit treatment in models is crucial. New multi-resolution climate change projections give a possible reason for low confidence in IPCC’s current 21st-century Antarctic sea-ice projections.

    • Thomas Rackow
    • , Sergey Danilov
    •  & Thomas Jung

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Global glacial chemical denudation is one of the largest contributors to global elemental cycles and, amplified by climate warming, will significantly impact nutrient loads in downstream ecosystems.

    • Xiangying Li
    • , Ninglian Wang
    •  & Guoyu Li

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Water mass transformation in the Nordic and Barents Seas is important for the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC). Here, the authors show increases in air-sea heat fluxes linked to sea ice retreat along the boundary currents of the Nordic and Barents Seas that could influence how the AMOC reacts to climate change.

    • G. W. K. Moore
    • , K. Våge
    •  & R. S. Pickart

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The North Atlantic biological pump has the most intense absorption of C globally, but how this will fare in light of climate changes (especially sea-ice melting) is poorly understood. Here the authors present a 24-month continuous time series of physical, chemical, and biological observations in the Fram Strait.

    • Wilken-Jon von Appen
    • , Anya M. Waite
    •  & Antje Boetius

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Anomalously slow seismic velocities in the upper Greenlandic crust reveal soft sedimentary substrates beneath major outlet glaciers. This, together with elevated geothermal heat flux observed at the onset of fast ice flow, has major implications for ice-sheet dynamics.

    • G. A. Jones
    • , A. M. G. Ferreira
    •  & A. Morelli

  • Article
    | Open Access

    During permafrost thaw, nitrogen can be released as the greenhouse gas nitrous oxide, but the magnitude of this flux is unknown. Nitrous oxide emissions from ice-rich permafrost deposits are reported here, showing that emissions increase after thawing and stabilization and could represent an unappreciated positive climate feedback in the Arctic.

    • M. E. Marushchak
    • , J. Kerttula
    •  & C. Biasi

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Accurate assessments of ice-sheet runoff are essential for sea-level projections. A new method using satellite altimeter observations can provide near real-time surface mass balance measurements across an entire ice sheet and reveal runoff variability not captured by global climate models.

    • Thomas Slater
    • , Andrew Shepherd
    •  & Kate Briggs

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The Antarctic ozone hole has had far-reaching impacts, but effects on geochemical cycles in polar regions is still unknown. Iodine records from the interior of Antarctica provide evidence for human alteration of the natural geochemical cycle of this essential element.

    • Andrea Spolaor
    • , François Burgay
    •  & Alfonso Saiz-Lopez

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Some regions on the Moon are permanently covered in shadow and are therefore extremely difficult to see into. We develop a deep learning driven algorithm which enhances images of these regions, allowing us to see inside them with high resolution for the first time.

    • V. T. Bickel
    • , B. Moseley
    •  & M. Shirley

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