Ice-shelf retreat drives recent Pine Island Glacier speedup
Speedup of Pine Island Glacier over the past several decades has made it Antarctica’s largest contributor to sea-level rise. The past speedup is largely due to grounding-line retreat in response to ocean-induced thinning that reduced ice-shelf buttressing. While speeds remained fairly steady from 20...
| Published in: | Science Advances |
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| Main Authors: | , , , , |
| Format: | Article in Journal/Newspaper |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
American Association for the Advancement of Science
2021
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://nora.nerc.ac.uk/id/eprint/530498/ https://nora.nerc.ac.uk/id/eprint/530498/1/eabg3080.full.pdf https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/7/24/eabg3080 |
| Summary: | Speedup of Pine Island Glacier over the past several decades has made it Antarctica’s largest contributor to sea-level rise. The past speedup is largely due to grounding-line retreat in response to ocean-induced thinning that reduced ice-shelf buttressing. While speeds remained fairly steady from 2009 to late 2017, our Copernicus Sentinel 1A/B–derived velocity data show a >12% speedup over the past 3 years, coincident with a 19-km retreat of the ice shelf. We use an ice-flow model to simulate this loss, finding that accelerated calving can explain the recent speedup, independent of the grounding-line, melt-driven processes responsible for past speedups. If the ice shelf’s rapid retreat continues, it could further destabilize the glacier far sooner than would be expected due to surface- or ocean-melting processes. |
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