yamada_etal_2002.html
Bulletin of Glaciological Research 19 (2002) 101-106
©Japanese Society of Snow and Ice
Reconnaissance on the No.31 Glacier in the Suntar-Khayata Range, Sakha Republic, Russian Federation
Tomomi
YAMADA1, Shuhei
TAKAHASHI2, Takayuki
SHIRAIWA1, Yoshiyuki
FUJII3, Yuriy
KONONOV4, Maria D.
ANANICHEVA4, Michael
M. KOREISHA5,
Yaroslav D. MURAVYEV6
and Taras SAMBORSKY7
1 Institute of
Low Temperature Science, Hokkaido University, Sapporo 060-0819
JAPAN
2 Kitami Institute of Technology, Kitami 090-8507 JAPAN
3 National Institute of Polar Research, Itabashi, Tokyo 173-8515
JAPAN
4 Institute of Geography, Russian Academy of Sciences,
Staromonetny 29, Moscow 109017 RUSSIA
5 Glaciology Group of Productive Scientific Research Institute
for Engineering Investigation for Construction (PNIIIS),
Okruzhnoy Proezd 18, Moscow 105187, RUSSIA
6 Institute of Volcanology, Russian Academy of Sciences, Piyp
Boulevard 9, Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky 683006, RUSSIA
7 Department of Geography, Moscow State University, Vorobyevy
Gory, Moscow, RUSSIA
Abstract
We carried out
a preliminary glaciological research on the No.31 Glacier in the
Suntar Khayata Range, Sakha Republic, Russian Federation, in the
summer of 2001. This glacier was intensively studied, including
mass balance, ice temperature measurements and surveying, by
Russian researchers in 1957-58 (the 3rd International
Geophysical Year) (Koreisya, 1963). We aimed to obtain the change
of the glacier volume since 1958 to study climate change during
the last 40 years, and to know the possibility of ice core
drilling and analyses for paleoclimatic study in the eastern
Siberia. The glacier is a valley-type cold glacier of
approximately 3.85 km long and covers the altitude from 2728 m to
2050 m a.s.l. The accumulation area of the glacier is mostly
underlain by superimposed ice, which is slightly capped with
water-saturated firn. The ablation area is characterized by well-developed
longitudinal foliations, and basal ice layers at the very end of
the terminus. The air temperature was as high as 12.7oC in average at the Base Camp (ca. 2000 m
a.s.l.) during the observation period (July 21-27, 2001), and we
observed intensive melting at the whole area of the glacier. From
this observation, we conclude that the glacier is not suitable
for the ice core study because it is probably difficult to
reconstruct a continuous ice core climate record.
Beside glaciological studies, we conducted a topographical survey
of the glacier, which showed that the glacier terminus had
retreated approximately 200 m in distance and lowered by
approximately 20 m from 1957-59 to 2001.
