Bathymetry measured near Pine Island Glacier during POLARSTERN cruise PS104, link to GeoTIFF ...

• Main Author: Arndt, Jan Erik
• Format: Dataset
• Language: English
• Published: PANGAEA 2017
• Subjects: PS104; Polarstern; Marine Geophysics @ AWI AWI_GeoPhy; Antarc*; Antarctic; Ice Shelf; Pine Island Glacier
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.1594/pangaea.881546; https://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.881546

Pine Island Glacier is the largest current Antarctic contributor to sea-level rise. Its ice loss has substantially increased over the last 25 years through thinning, acceleration and grounding line retreat. However, the calving line positions of the stabilising ice shelf did not show any trend within the observational record (last 70 years) until calving in 2015 led to unprecedented retreat and changed the alignment of the calving front. Bathymetric surveying revealed a ridge below the former ice shelf and two shallower highs to the north. Satellite imagery shows that ice contact on the ridge was likely lost in 2006 but was followed by intermittent contact resulting in back stress fluctuations on the ice shelf. Continuing ice-shelf flow also led to occasional ice-shelf contact with the northern bathymetric highs, which initiated rift formation that led to calving. The observations show that bathymetry is an important factor in initiating calving events. ... : The bathymetric data was acquired with the hull-mounted Hydrosweep DS3 system during expedition PS104 of RV Polarstern in 2017. The data was gridded at 25 m resolution in Fledermaus and exported as GeoTiff. ...