Widespread slowdown in thinning rates of West Antarctic Ice Shelves ...

. Antarctica’s floating ice shelves modulate discharge of grounded ice into the ocean by providing a backstress. Ice shelf thinning and grounding line retreat have reduced this backstress, driving rapid drawdown of key unstable areas of the Antarctic Ice Sheet, leading to sea level rise. If ice shel...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Gardner, Alex
Format: Dataset
Language:unknown
Published: Root 2023
Subjects:
Online Access:https://dx.doi.org/10.48577/jpl.9j9jmv
https://dataverse.jpl.nasa.gov/citation?persistentId=doi:10.48577/jpl.9J9JMV
Description
Summary:. Antarctica’s floating ice shelves modulate discharge of grounded ice into the ocean by providing a backstress. Ice shelf thinning and grounding line retreat have reduced this backstress, driving rapid drawdown of key unstable areas of the Antarctic Ice Sheet, leading to sea level rise. If ice shelf loss continues, it may initiate irreversible glacier retreat through the marine ice sheet instability. Identification of areas undergoing significant change requires knowledge of spatial and temporal patterns in recent ice shelf loss. We used 26 years (1992—2017) of satellite-derived Antarctic ice shelf thickness, flow and basal melt rates to construct a time-dependent dataset of ice-shelf thickness and basal melt on a 3 km grid every 3 months. We used a novel data fusion approach, state-of-the-art satellite-derived velocities, and a new surface mass balance model. Our data revealed an overall pattern of thinning all around Antarctica, with a thinning slowdown starting around 2008 widespread across the Amundsen, ...