Tracking the Cracking: A Holistic Analysis of Rapid Ice Shelf Fracture Using Seismology, Geodesy, and Satellite Imagery on the Pine Island Glacier Ice Shelf, West Antarctica

Ice shelves regulate the stability of marine ice sheets. We track fractures on Pine Island Glacier, a quickly accelerating glacier in West Antarctica that contributes more to sea level rise than any other glacier. Using an on‐ice seismic network deployed from 2012 to 2014, we catalog icequakes that...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Geophysical Research Letters
Main Authors: Olinger, S. D., Lipovsky, B. P., Denolle, M. A., Crowell, B. W.
Format: Text
Language:English
Published: John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2022
Subjects:
Research Letter
Pine Island Glacier
West Antarctica
Antarc*
Antarctica
Ice Shelf
Ice Shelves
Pine Island
Online Access:http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9285369/
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35846344
https://doi.org/10.1029/2021GL097604
Description
Summary:Ice shelves regulate the stability of marine ice sheets. We track fractures on Pine Island Glacier, a quickly accelerating glacier in West Antarctica that contributes more to sea level rise than any other glacier. Using an on‐ice seismic network deployed from 2012 to 2014, we catalog icequakes that dominantly consist of flexural gravity waves. Icequakes occur near the rift tip and in two distinct areas of the shear margin, and TerraSAR‐X imagery shows significant fracture in each source region. Rift‐tip icequakes increase with ice speed, linking rift fracture to glaciological stresses and/or localized thinning. Using a simple flexural gravity wave model, we deconvolve wave propagation effects to estimate icequake source durations of 19.5–50.0 s and transient loads of 3.8–14.0 kPa corresponding to 4.3–15.9 m of crevasse growth per icequake. These long‐source durations suggest that water flow may limit the rate of crevasse opening.

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