Rapid submarine ice melting in the grounding zones of ice shelves in West Antarctica

Enhanced submarine ice-shelf melting strongly controls ice loss in the Amundsen Sea embayment (ASE) of West Antarctica, but its magnitude is not well known in the critical grounding zones of the ASE’s major glaciers. Here we directly quantify bottom ice losses along tens of kilometres with airborne...

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Vydané v:Nature communications Ročník 7; číslo 1; s. 13243 - 8
Hlavní autori: Khazendar, Ala, Rignot, Eric, Schroeder, Dustin M., Seroussi, Helene, Schodlok, Michael P., Scheuchl, Bernd, Mouginot, Jeremie, Sutterley, Tyler C., Velicogna, Isabella
Médium: Journal Article
Jazyk:English
Vydavateľské údaje: London Nature Publishing Group UK 25.10.2016
Nature Publishing Group
Nature Portfolio
Predmet:
704/106/125
704/829/2737
Airborne radar
Anchor ice
Equilibrium
Glaciers
Humanities and Social Sciences
Hypotheses
Ice
Ice shelves
Melting
multidisciplinary
Oceanography
Science
Science (multidisciplinary)
Topography
Amundsen Sea
Antarctica
California
United States > US
ISSN:2041-1723, 2041-1723
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Popis
Shrnutí:Enhanced submarine ice-shelf melting strongly controls ice loss in the Amundsen Sea embayment (ASE) of West Antarctica, but its magnitude is not well known in the critical grounding zones of the ASE’s major glaciers. Here we directly quantify bottom ice losses along tens of kilometres with airborne radar sounding of the Dotson and Crosson ice shelves, which buttress the rapidly changing Smith, Pope and Kohler glaciers. Melting in the grounding zones is found to be much higher than steady-state levels, removing 300–490 m of solid ice between 2002 and 2009 beneath the retreating Smith Glacier. The vigorous, unbalanced melting supports the hypothesis that a significant increase in ocean heat influx into ASE sub-ice-shelf cavities took place in the mid-2000s. The synchronous but diverse evolutions of these glaciers illustrate how combinations of oceanography and topography modulate rapid submarine melting to hasten mass loss and glacier retreat from West Antarctica. Ice-shelf bottom melting is thought to cause mass loss in West Antarctica. Here, the authors analyse radar observations of the Dotson and Crosson ice shelves to directly quantify grounding zone unbalanced melting of up to 70 m per year, and illustrate its relation with bed topography and grounding line retreat.
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ISSN:2041-1723
2041-1723
DOI:10.1038/ncomms13243