Observations of Buried Lake Drainage on the Antarctic Ice Sheet

Between 1992 and 2017, the Antarctic Ice Sheet (AIS) lost ice equivalent to 7.6 ± 3.9 mm of sea level rise. AIS mass loss is mitigated by ice shelves that provide a buttress by regulating ice flow from tributary glaciers. However, ice‐shelf stability is threatened by meltwater ponding, which may ini...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Geophysical Research Letters
Main Authors: Dunmire, D., Lenaerts, J. T. M., Banwell, A. F., Wever, N., Shragge, J., Lhermitte, S., Drews, R., Pattyn, F., Hansen, J. S. S., Willis, I. C., Miller, J., Keenan, E.
Format: Text
Language:English
Published: John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2020
Subjects:
Research Letters
Antarctic
Buttress
The Antarctic
Antarc*
Antarctica
Ice Sheet
Ice Shelf
Ice Shelves
Online Access:http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7507767/
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32999516
https://doi.org/10.1029/2020GL087970
Description
Summary:Between 1992 and 2017, the Antarctic Ice Sheet (AIS) lost ice equivalent to 7.6 ± 3.9 mm of sea level rise. AIS mass loss is mitigated by ice shelves that provide a buttress by regulating ice flow from tributary glaciers. However, ice‐shelf stability is threatened by meltwater ponding, which may initiate, or reactivate preexisting, fractures, currently poorly understood processes. Here, through ground penetrating radar (GPR) analysis over a buried lake in the grounding zone of an East Antarctic ice shelf, we present the first field observations of a lake drainage event in Antarctica via vertical fractures. Concurrent with the lake drainage event, we observe a decrease in surface elevation and an increase in Sentinel‐1 backscatter. Finally, we suggest that fractures that are initiated or reactivated by lake drainage events in a grounding zone will propagate with ice flow onto the ice shelf itself, where they may have implications for its stability.

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