Widespread seawater intrusions beneath the grounded ice of Thwaites Glacier, West Antarctica

• Main Author: Rignot, Eric
• Format: Other/Unknown Material
• Language: unknown
• Published: Zenodo 2024
• Subjects: Interferometry; Antarctica; Southern Ocean; Sea level rise; Antarc*; Antarctic; Ice Sheet; Thwaites Glacier; West Antarctica
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.3ffbg79rm

Warm water from the Southern Ocean has a dominant impact on the evolution of Antarctic glaciers and in turn on their contribution to sea level rise. Using a continuous time series of daily-repeat satellite synthetic-aperture radar interferometry data from the ICEYE constellation collected in March-June 2023, we document an ice grounding zone, or region of tidally-controlled migration of the transition boundary between grounded ice and ice afloat in the ocean, at the main trunk of Thwaites Glacier, West Antarctica, a strong contributor to sea level rise with an ice volume equivalent to a 0.6-m global sea level rise. The ice grounding zone is 6 km wide in the central part of Thwaites with shallow bed slopes, and 2 km wide along its flanks with steep basal slopes. We additionally detect irregular seawater intrusions, 5-10 cm in thickness, extending another 6 km upstream, at high tide, in a bed depression located beyond a bedrock ridge that impedes the glacier retreat. Seawater intrusions align well with regions predicted by the GlaDS subglacial water model to host a high-pressure distributed subglacial hydrology system in between lower-pressure subglacial channels. Pressurized seawater intrusions will induce vigorous melt of grounded ice over kilometers, making the glacier more vulnerable to ocean warming, and increasing the projections of ice mass loss. Kilometer-wide, widespread seawater intrusion beneath grounded ice may be the missing link between the rapid, past, and present changes in ice sheet mass and the slower changes replicated by ice sheet models. The dataset includes grounding line positions, all ICEYE radar interferograms and parameter files, files of tidal predictions and corrections for change in atmospheric pressure, and output products from the GlADS subglacial hydrology model. Funding provided by: National Aeronautics and Space Administration Crossref Funder Registry ID: https://ror.org/027ka1x80 Award Number: 80NSSC23M0146 Funding provided by: National Aeronautics and Space Administration ...