Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

Breakup of Arctic sea ice causes fog, which is often the dominant cloud type in summer over oceans and coastal regions. Fog diminishes inland. Rapid recent climate change has affected cloudiness over Arctic ocean and land, but it is not clear how this has affected coastal regions. Many Arctic glaciers are located in the coast-to-inland transition zone, and those coastal glaciers with frequent summer fog covering their lower elevations experience reductions in melt. Although this has been recognized, understanding of fog extent and trends in coastal transition zones and regional and local effects of fog on glacier melt and behaviour is limited. This research uses weather data and satellite imaging to document summer fog and glacier length, area and melt changes over various timescales in Arctic coastal regions of Canada and Greenland. These measurements will be combined with atmospheric data to create glacier melt models that include the influence of fog. The combined information from these methods will help in our understanding of spatial and temporal trends in fog, how fog affects glaciers and how glaciers are changing. The outcomes of this research program will aid in the understanding of processes related to glacier melt and glacier fluctuations, and the ability to predict the response of land-terminating and ocean-terminating glaciers to climate change. The documented trends in fog over time and space, as well as changes in Arctic glaciers, will also benefit other research fields.