The Terminal Disintegration of Steensby Gletscher, North Greenland

Abstract

Abstract Steensby Gletscher, located between Nyeboes Land and Warming Land, is one of the few Arctic ice streams with a floating tongue. It differs from other floating glaciers of the Arctic in that it discharges into a fjord with open water in the summer, in the presence of crevasses on its floating tongue, and in the way its terminus disintegrates areally into sublobes rather than shedding “Arctic” type icebergs by simple calving. The glacier’s terminal disintegration is ascribed to a slight northward bend of the fjord stretch which contains the floating tongue. The tongue, moving into the bend along a straight path, runs marginally aground near the shore at the outside of the bend, while the still-floating central part of the tongue continues to move forward. This leads to rotational movement of parts of the tongue which split off from the main ice mass along major crevasses to form sublobes separated from each other by wide gaps, and connected with the main ice mass only at their roots.