Dynamic thinning of glaciers on the Southern Antarctic Peninsula

Growing evidence has demonstrated the importance of ice shelf buttressing on the inland grounded ice, especially if it is resting on bedrock below sea level. Much of the Southern Antarctic Peninsula satisfies this condition and also possesses a bed slope that deepens inland. Such ice sheet geometry...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Science
Main Authors: Wouters, B., Martin-Español, A., Helm, V., Flament, T., van Wessem, J. M., Ligtenberg, S. R. M., van den Broeke, M. R., Bamber, J. L.
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:unknown
Published: AMER ASSOC ADVANCEMENT SCIENCE 2015
Subjects:
Antarctic
Antarctic Peninsula
Antarc*
Ice Sheet
Ice Shelf
Online Access:https://epic.awi.de/id/eprint/37998/
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/348/6237/899.abstract
https://hdl.handle.net/10013/epic.45616
Description
Summary:Growing evidence has demonstrated the importance of ice shelf buttressing on the inland grounded ice, especially if it is resting on bedrock below sea level. Much of the Southern Antarctic Peninsula satisfies this condition and also possesses a bed slope that deepens inland. Such ice sheet geometry is potentially unstable. We use satellite altimetry and gravity observations to show that a major portion of the region has, since 2009, destabilized. Ice mass loss of the marine-terminating glaciers has rapidly accelerated from close to balance in the 2000s to a sustained rate of –56 ± 8 gigatons per year, constituting a major fraction of Antarctica’s contribution to rising sea level. The widespread, simultaneous nature of the acceleration, in the absence of a persistent atmospheric forcing, points to an oceanic driving mechanism.

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