Marine ice in Larsen Ice Shelf

• Published in: Geophysical Research Letters
• Main Authors: Holland, Paul, Corr, Hugh, Vaughan, David, Jenkins, Adrian, Skvarca, Pedro
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: American Geophysical Union 2009
• Subjects: Weddell; Larsen Ice Shelf; Ice Shelf
• Online Access: http://nora.nerc.ac.uk/id/eprint/8651/; https://nora.nerc.ac.uk/id/eprint/8651/1/Hollandetal_GRL_accepted_%282%29.pdf

It is argued that Larsen Ice Shelf contains marine ice formed by oceanic freezing and other mechanisms. Missing basal returns in airborne radar soundings and observations of a smooth and healed surface coincide downstream of regions where an ocean model predicts freezing. Visible imagery suggests that marine ice currently stabilizes Larsen C Ice Shelf and implicates failure of marine flow bands in the 2002 Larsen B Ice Shelf collapse. Ocean modeling indicates that any regime change towards the incursion of warmer Modified Weddell Deep Water into the Larsen C cavity could curtail basal freezing and its stabilizing influence.