Bathymetry of the Amundsen Sea Embayment ...

We employ airborne gravity data from NASA's Operation IceBridge collected in 2009–2014 to infer the bathymetry of sub–ice shelf cavities in front of Pine Island, Thwaites, Smith, and Kohler glaciers, West Antarctica. We use a three‐dimensional inversion constrained by multibeam echo sounding da...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Millan, Romain
Format: Dataset
Language:English
Published: Dryad 2018
Subjects:
Online Access:https://dx.doi.org/10.7280/d18q1d
https://datadryad.org/stash/dataset/doi:10.7280/D18Q1D
Description
Summary:We employ airborne gravity data from NASA's Operation IceBridge collected in 2009–2014 to infer the bathymetry of sub–ice shelf cavities in front of Pine Island, Thwaites, Smith, and Kohler glaciers, West Antarctica. We use a three‐dimensional inversion constrained by multibeam echo sounding data offshore and bed topography from a mass conservation reconstruction on land. The seamless bed elevation data refine details of the Pine Island sub–ice shelf cavity, a slightly thinner cavity beneath Thwaites, and previously unknown deep (>1200 m) channels beneath the Crosson and Dotson ice shelves that shallow (500 m and 750 m, respectively) near the ice shelf fronts. These sub–ice shelf channels define the natural pathways for warm, circumpolar deep water to reach the glacier grounding lines, melt the ice shelves from below, and constrain the pattern of past and future glacial retreat. Millan, R., E. Rignot, V. Bernier, M. Morlighem, and P. Dutrieux (2017), Bathymetry of the Amundsen Sea Embayment sector of West ...