资源环境科技发展态势分析平台

Iceberg calving is a major component of glacier mass ablation that is not well understood due to a lack of detailed temporal and spatial observations. Here, we measure glacier speed and surface elevation at 3‐minute intervals using a portable radar interferometer at Kangilernata Sermia, West Greenland for a period of two weeks in July 2016. We detect a 20% diurnal variation in glacier speed in phase with tidal height propagating kilometers inland. We find no speed up from ice shedding off the calving face or the detachment of floating ice blocks, but a 30% speedup within a few hundred meters of the ice front that persist for days when calving removes full thickness grounded ice blocks. Within one ice thickness from the calving front, we detect maximum strain rates 2 to 3 times larger than observable from satellite data, which has implications for studying iceberg calving as a fracturing process.