Underwater glacial melting much faster than predicted: Study

Underwater melting of tidewater glaciers is occurring much faster than previously thought, according to a study which could lead to improved forecasting of climate-driven sea-level rise.

The findings, published in the journal Science, are based on a new method developed by the researchers that for the first time directly measures the submarine melting of tidewater glaciers and valley glaciers that flow all the way down to the ocean.

"Tidewater glaciers around the globe and in Greenland, Alaska, Antarctica and beyond are retreating and raising sea levels globally," said Rebecca Jackson, an oceanographer at Rutgers University-New Brunswick in the US.

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"Submarine melting has been implicated as a trigger for this glacier retreat, but we have had no direct measurements of melting, let alone how it might vary in time," Jackson said. The study shows that the prevailing theory for melt significantly underestimates melt rates.

"These results suggest a stronger coupling between the ocean and glacier than previously expected, and our work provides a path forward to improving our understanding of how the ocean impacts glaciers," she said.

The scientists studied the underwater melting of the LeConte Glacier, a tidewater glacier in Alaska, from 2016-2018. Most research on the underwater melting of glaciers around the world has relied on theoretical modelling, measuring conditions near the glaciers and then applying theory to predict melt rates, but this theory had never been directly tested, said Dave Sutherland, a professor at the University of Oregon in the US. The researchers looked for changes in melt patterns between the August and May measurements.

"We found that melt rates are significantly higher than expected across the whole underwater face of the glacier -- in some places 100 times higher than theory would predict," Jackson said.

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"We also find, as expected but never shown, that melt rates are higher in summer than in spring, and that variations in melt rates across the terminus cause overcutting and undercutting," she said. While the study focused on one tidewater glacier, the new approach should be useful to researchers who study melting at other tidewater glaciers around the world, which would help to improve projections of global sea level rise.

"The fact that we show the existing theory is wildly inaccurate at one glacier -- the only glacier where we can make a robust comparison between theory and observations -- should lead us to be very sceptical of its current use in studying any tidewater glacier," Jackson added.

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"Our results also align with several recent studies of other glaciers that have indirectly suggested that theory under-predicts melting.

"Our observations prove this in a robust way and contribute to a growing body of research that suggests that we need to revisit our basic assumptions about what controls underwater melting at glaciers around the world," she said.