Brief communication: A submarine wall protecting the Amundsen Sea intensifies melting of neighboring ice shelves

• Main Authors: Özgür Gürses, Kolatschek, Vanessa, Wang, Qiang, Rodehacke, Christian B.
• Format: Other/Unknown Material
• Language: unknown
• Published: 2019
• Subjects: Amundsen Sea; Ice Shelf; Ice Shelves; Sea ice
• Online Access: https://zenodo.org/record/3240250; https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3240250

Disintegration of ice shelves in the Amundsen Sea has the potential to cause sea level rise by inducing an acceleration of grounded ice streams. Moore et al. (2018) proposed that using a submarine wall to block the penetration of warm water into the ice shelf cavities could reduce this risk. We use a global sea ice-ocean model to show that a wall shielding the Amundsen Sea below 350 m depth successfully suppresses the inflow of warm water and reduces ice shelf melting. However, the warm water gets redirected towards neighboring ice shelves, which reduces the effectiveness of the wall.