ARSF project IPY07/10: An investigation of the link between accelerated ice discharge and surface melting at the Greenland Ice Sheet; Led buy Dr. Andrew Shepherd, School of Geosciences, University of Edinburgh, EH8 9XP. Location: Russell Glacier.

This proposal was to record airborne LiDAR and camera observations to investigate the extent to which the processes of accelerated glacier discharge (e. g. Rignot and Kanagaratnam, 2006) and increased surface melting (e. g. Box et. al,2 006) at the Greenland Ice Sheet are linked. Specifically, we proposed (i) a survey of supra-glacial lake geometry to constrain a model of lake evolution and discharge, and (ii) a survey of glacier discharge downstream of supra-glacial lakes to determine the extent to which both land- and marine-terminating glaciers have experienced secular and seasonal velocity fluctuations.

Together, these experiments will provide data sufficient to assess the current and future stability of the Greenland Ice Sheet to projected (Church and Gregory, 2001)climate warming.