Effect of Sedimentation on Ice-Sheet Grounding-Line Stability
Sedimentation filling space beneath ice shelves helps to stabilize ice sheets against grounding-line retreat in response to a rise in relative sea level of at least several meters. Recent Antarctic changes thus cannot be attributed to sea-level rise, strengthening earlier interpretations that warmin...
Published in: | Science |
---|---|
Main Authors: | , , , , |
Format: | Article in Journal/Newspaper |
Language: | English |
Published: |
American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
2007
|
Subjects: | |
Online Access: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1138396 https://www.science.org/doi/pdf/10.1126/science.1138396 |
Summary: | Sedimentation filling space beneath ice shelves helps to stabilize ice sheets against grounding-line retreat in response to a rise in relative sea level of at least several meters. Recent Antarctic changes thus cannot be attributed to sea-level rise, strengthening earlier interpretations that warming has driven ice-sheet mass loss. Large sea-level rise, such as the ≈100-meter rise at the end of the last ice age, may overwhelm the stabilizing feedback from sedimentation, but smaller sea-level changes are unlikely to have synchronized the behavior of ice sheets in the past. |
---|