Perito Moreno Glacier is one of the outlet glaciers in the Southern
Patagonian Ice Field. An interesting feature of this glacier is the
formation of an ice dam at the glacier front, where the terminus flows
across a lake, Lago Argentino. Contrasting to most of glaciers in the
world, including the other Patagonian glaciers, the length of Perito
Moreno Glacier has not changed for several decades. This unique
behaviour shows that glacier evolution is not a simple function of a
global temperature change.
We spent two weeks in this glacier from December 2008 to January 2009
to investigate short term variations in the ice flow speed. Since the
flow speed of this glacier is exceptionally high (several meters per
day), it is expected that details of flow speed changes in a temporal
scales of a day or hours can be captured by high frequency GPS
measurements. The goal of this project is to find such changes in ice
dynamics to better understand the nature of the fast flowing feature
and its connection to the stability of Perito Moreno Glacier.
