Investigation of current surge dynamics of Tunabreen; RIS ID 10913

The proposed fieldwork will be focused on surging glaciers, and specifically will take place at Tunabreen, a tidewater surge type glacier. Its behaviour has suggested a regular 35-40 year interval, between one active phase and another; thus, glaciologists were not expecting any sudden advance before 2040, at earliest. However, in late 2016 the glacier started experiencing a prominent acceleration. Despite the uncertain cause of such speed up, the event coincided with a period of record high temperatures and rainfall in October and November 2016. The collected data, together with remote sensing data, will be assimilated in an open-source ice sheet model (ISSM) to infer the pattern of friction at the base of the glacier. This may shed light on the dynamics of the present surge cycle of Tunabreen and help to develop better models of glacier surging.