Satellite Remote Sensing Investigations into Changing Ice-shelf Extents in the Eastern Weddell Sea Sector of Antarctica ...

• Main Author: Homer, Nicholas
• Format: Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: Apollo - University of Cambridge Repository 2020
• Subjects: Satellite remote sensing; Ice shelves; Weddell Sea Sector; East Antarctica; Antarc*; Antarctic; Antarctic Peninsula; Antarctica; Ice Sheet; Ice Shelf; Ice Shelves; Weddell Sea
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.17863/cam.70560; https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/323108

Satellite observations of ice-shelf collapse and related ice-mass drawdown from the Antarctic Peninsula over the past > 3 decades have been unambiguously linked to changes in atmospheric and oceanic processes as a result of anthropogenic climate change. Therefore, contemporary glaciological research is increasingly focussed on the long-term future stability of the vast West and East Antarctic Ice Sheets under different climate change scenarios, where similar changes to atmospheric and oceanic processes to those found in the Antarctic Peninsula are forecast. The floating ice shelves which extend from the ice sheet in these regions are of particular research interest because, by their very nature, they exert considerable control over the flow of the inland ice-sheet as well as respond relatively rapidly to external forcing mechanisms. Here, new ice-shelf extent mapping is undertaken by mapping the calving front locations in the eastern Weddell Sea Sector of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet, where four of ...