High resolution monitoring of Greenlandic ice marginal lakes

At present, 10% of the Greenland Ice Sheet (GrIS) margin terminates in a lake, but this is forecast to increase significantly over coming decades with ongoing retreat and thinning of the ice margin. This is important because the existence of more and larger lakes implies greater mass loss at the margin as well as an increase in dynamic thinning up-ice. At the same time, non-glacial lake surface waters worldwide have been shown to be warming yet the record of temperature change in ice-marginal lakes is extremely sparse. These ice-marginal lakes are likely to become increasingly important drivers of mass loss, and so there is an urgent need to investigate more closely the connection between their evolution and changes in the ice sheet. Therefore, a key objective is to explore the thermal properties of these lakes.The majority of Greenland’s ice marginal lakes are small (