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Ice Cores, Long Term Climate, Atmospheric Chemistry, Stable Isotopes, Pollen, Biological and Other Records from the Canadian Arctic and Yukon.

NRCan, GSC, TSD, National Glaciology Program

David Fisher, Roy (Fritz) Koerner, Mike Demuth, Jocelyne Bourgeois, Chris Zdanowicz, James Zheng, John Sekerka, Murty Parnandi

The glaciology groups' ice core program dates back to the 1970s. It will continue to provide information about the history of the above mentioned variables on time resolutions of seasonal to millennial and cover the last glacial/interglacial cycle from sites all over the Arctic and the Yukon. The ice core studies add a time dimension to the regional monitoring programmes also done by the group and place the modern trends in context. The multi-proxy, multi-variable approach of ice cores allows the cause and effect relationships to be established and provides, along with the records from tree rings and other climate sensitive stratigraphies, a way of reconstructing the history of the earth's climate in great detail over the last few thousand years.

The ice core studies planned for Mt Logan, and surroundings will throw light on the importance of the Pacific Northwest and the contrast between the Eastern and Western Arctic. This Logan work is lead by the GSC but is only possible because of the cooperative approach in planning, financing and execution between universities and other government institutions (University of New Hampshire, University of Maine. Ottawa University, University of Copenhagen, DFO, University of Alaska, University of Alberta - Calgary AINA, UBC, NIPR - Japan, Science Centre Kluane, Parks Canada and others). The more people that are involved in the science and results, the better.

The Arctic ice core work has recently focused on our new ultra clean drill that utilizes titanium barrels, cutting head and pre-cleaned plastic inserts. This drill is providing very clean cores for the study of ultra trace metals and other "contaminants". It will be available for cooperative projects that require ultra clean samples and where co-planning and financing is possible. We are also analyzing two recently obtained surface to bed cores from the top of the Devon Ice Cap. Possible future Arctic drill sites in the reconnaissance and planning stage are the Barnes Ice Cap (Baffin Island) and Mt Oxford (Ellesmere Island). These projects are presently in the group planning, science planning and finance building stages. Anyone interested in participating need only contact us.

The third largest water ice cap known after Antarctica and Greenland is the North Cap on Mars and the group has a small but active programme to study it. This throws light on the climate cycles of Mars, extreme ice rheology and the water(resource) cycle of Mars. The First and Second International Conferences on Mars Polar Science and Exploration were co-(convened) sponsored (along with NASA, IGS and the University of Iceland) by GSC. This work has been pursued along with Icefield Instruments Inc and we also share in their interests in the Antarctic Lake and Europa cryobot studies.

Ground and Remote Sensing of Glacier and Ice Cap Fluctuations as a Climate Change Detection Strategy (M.N. Demuth and R.M. Koerner)

It has long been understood that the variations of mass balance and areal extent and thickness of glaciers and ice caps represent one of the most reliable measures of energy and moisture fluxes at the earth's surface; the former representing a direct, immediate response to climate variations and the later, the delayed responses after dynamic readjustment to mass balance variations. As such, perspectives of varying temporal scale and resolution can be obtained by selecting glaciers and ice caps of varying glacio-climatic situation, size, bed slope and thermal state.

As the lead federal glaciological research agency and the agency responsible for maintaining Canada's national and international glacier monitoring, assessment and reporting obligations (IAHS/ICSI-WGMS, UNESCO-IHP, UNEP, WMO-GCOS-GTN-G), the National Glaciology Programme (NGP) and its Canadian Glacier Variations Monitoring and Assessment Network (CGVMAN) of government, university and private-sector partners currently study six glaciers and ice caps in the Arctic and four glaciers in the Cordillera. They include Agassiz (NGP), Baby (Trent University), Devon (NGP), Meighen (NGP), Melville (NGP), White (Trent University)] and [Helm (NGP, Simon Fraser University), Peyto (NGP, Alberta Environment, University of Toronto, Trans-Alta Utilities), Place (NGP, University of British Columbia), Sentinel (NGP, Simon Fraser University)]. This network is but a skeleton of the Canadian benchmark network contributed during the UNESCO International Hydrological Decade. Canada's benchmark network currently suffers from several spatial/glacio-climatic gaps. Moreover, much evidence suggests that the global network suffers from size and continental-to-hemispheric spatial biases.

The degree to which Canada can improve its national capacity and it's contribution to assisting global network development will depend on further partnerships, including the adjunct activities of CRYSYS. New glacier/ice cap-agency partnerships in the Cordillera and Arctic are expected to develop and help promote an observational basis that is not only data-driven for assisting Canada's contribution towards understanding global climate change, but issue-based to attend to topics of national and international significance (e.g., water resources, sea level, pollution pathways/chemistry, ecosystem functioning).

Climate Change Action Fund Prairie Adaptation Research Cooperative (PARC)

PARC Project P 55

The impact of climate change on the glaciers of the Canadian Rocky Mountain eastern slopes and implications for water resource-related adaptation in the Canadian prairies - "Phase I".

• Michael N. Demuth, P.Eng., P.Geo.
  Physical Scientist-Glaciologist
  Geological Survey of Canada
  National Glaciology Programme
  601 Booth Street
  Ottawa, ON
  K1A 0E8
  telephone: 613 996 0235
  fax: 613 996 5448
  E-mail: mdemuth@nrcan.gc.ca
• Alain Pietroniro, Ph.D., P.Eng.
  Research Scientist-Hydrologist
  Environment Canada
  National Water Research Institute
  11 Innovation Boulevard
  Saskatoon, SK
  S7N 3H5
  telephone: 306 975 5750
  fax: 306 975 5143
  E-mail: al.pietroniro@ec.gc.ca

Key words: climate change, glaciers, mass balance, water resources, hydrological modeling, hydro-electric generation, adaptation

Glacial meltwater provides critical late-summer discharge to numerous rivers and aquatic/riparian systems adjacent to where glaciers are extensively found. Late-summer flows are critical to hydro-power operations, ground-water recharge and fish who, for example, rely on base flow to maintain spawning habitat in the Autumn. Using a transect of basins within the North Saskatchewan River Basin exhibiting a range of glacier-cover/climatological regimes, and accounting for variability in precipitation, it has been determined that catchment yields for the annual recession period (Aug - Nov) have been reduced significantly over the period of record (ca. 1950 - present) and is commensurate with observed glacier retreat. Moreover, this reduction in glacier size is observed despite general increases in the vertical flux of meltwater released by glaciers over the last several decades. Now, it is still a question whether the observed glacier retreat is the direct result of anthropogenic forcing or a natural recovery from the Little Ice Age maximum stage to some new equilibrium or some combination of the two. An examination of the available morpho-stratigraphic (e.g., moraines, trim lines) evidence suggests that the leeward-slope glaciers are accelerating towards a reduced stage not attained since the early Holocene warm interval. In any case, it appears that glacier-fed rivers are already experiencing the medium-to-long-term impacts of climate variability predicted by the IPCC - (reduced flows from such sources ). An extension of this pilot study is attending to the remainder of the catchments in the aforementioned transect and the entire annual hydrograph using statistical (classical and Bayesian) analysis and distributed hydrological modelling. This work hopes to better define future glacio-climatic endpoints that hereunto have been characterized only by the extremes of Holocene variability exhibited by morpho-stratigraphic evidence.

Major partners:

• Taha B.M.J. Ouarda, Ph.D., P.E., ing, Universite du Quebec, INRS-Eau
  Bayesian statistical analysis, stochastic hydrology
• Kevin Cash, Ph.D., National Water Research Institute
  Aquatic Ecologist
• John Taggart, P.Eng., Alberta Environment, Water Management Division
  Head, Hydrology/Forecasting Section
• Norm Crookshank, P.Eng., National Research Council Canada, Canadian Hydraulic Centre
  Environmental Simulator (EnSim) - Hydrologic
• Paul Godman, P.Geol., TransAlta-Utilities
  Water Resources Planner

 

NRCan Glaciologist Mike Demuth (GSC-TSD) and Environment Canada Hydrologist Al Pietroniro (NWRI) team-up with private sector to conduct first Airborne LASER Terrain Mapping (ALTM) survey of glaciers in the Canadian Rocky Mountains. Optech of Toronto and Maltais Geomatics. of Calgary collected and processed LASER ranging and GPS data for a 5 km x 20 km area over the Wapta Icefields from an altitude of 4000m a.s.l. Research is being conducted to determine whether airborne and satellite LASER and RADAR surveys can be applied to the study of smaller glaciers and ice caps for the purpose of measuring mass balance and related glacier-climate parameters. The NRCan/DOE National Glaciology Programme hopes to develop these techniques as part of Canada's long-term contribution to the Global Climate Observing System and for its efforts to detect and study the impacts of climate change on the snow and ice-related water resources of western Canada.

Platform parameters:
Aircraft 4000 m.a.s.l., (330-1000 m AGL); 130 kts ground speed
LASER Scan ±20° off NADIR @ 28 Hz
LASER trigger repetition rate, 10kHz

Positioning:
DF GPS and INS onboard
DF GPS at GSD Benchmark #685E (Bow Summit)
12 ch.,1pps, L1, L2, CA, CACS post-processing