Milne Glacier is a marine-terminating glacier located on the northern coast of Ellesmere Island in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, a region that has experienced extensive ice-mass loss over the last two decades. Milne Glacier flows into Milne Fiord where it transitions from grounded to floating at its grounding line. Glacier changes in the grounding zone, which spans from the inland limit of tidal flexure, known as the hinge line, to the actual grounding line and then to the landward limit of hydrostatic equilibrium, are critical for glacier dynamics. In this study, we explored changes in the Milne Glacier hinge line as a proxy for the grounding-line position using a radar technique that is sensitive to tidal motion. Double difference interferometric analysis of Synthetic Aperture Radar (DDInSAR) images from European Remote Sensing (ERS-1/2) satellites, Sentinel-1 A/B, and RADARSAT Constellation Mission (RCM) demonstrated that the grounding line retreat was highly asymmetric, with more than twice the average retreat rate near the western edge (~124 m yr-1) than at the center (~53 m yr-1) of the glacier between 2011 and 2023. RCM images acquired in a 4-day repeat cycle exposed short-term variability in grounding line positions and allowed us to estimate the landward and seaward boundaries of grounding-line migration with tides at a 10 m spatial resolution. RCM-derived timeseries of hinge line migration over a year were analyzed with respect to glacier-specific factors to better understand how short-term processes affect the long-term retreat of the grounding line.
1125 Colonel By Dr
Ottawa ON K1S 5B6
Canada