Ice Island Calvings and Ice Shelf Changes, Milne Ice Shelf and Ayles Ice Shelf, Ellesmere Island, N.W.T.

Ice Shelf Water plume flow beneath FilchnerRonne Ice Shelf, Antarctica

[1] A two-dimensional plume model is used to study the interaction between FilchnerRonne Ice Shelf, Antarctica and its underlying ocean cavity. Ice Shelf Water (ISW) plumes are initiated by the freshwater released from a melting ice shelf and, if they rise, may become supercooled and deposit marine ice due to the pressure increase in the in situ freezing temperature. The aim of this modeling st...

Ocean mixing beneath Pine Island Glacier ice shelf, West Antarctica

Ice shelves around Antarctica are vulnerable to an increase in ocean-driven melting, with the melt rate depending on ocean temperature and the strength of flow inside the ice-shelf cavities. We present measurements of velocity, temperature, salinity, turbulent kinetic energy dissipation rate, and thermal variance dissipation rate beneath Pine Island Glacier ice shelf, West Antarctica. These mea...

Ice shelf changes on the Antarctic Peninsula

Ice-shelf buttressing and the stability of marine ice sheets

Ice-shelf buttressing and the stability of marinetype ice sheets are investigated numerically. Buttressing effects are analysed for a situation where a stable grounding line is located on a bed sloping upwards in the direction of flow. Such grounding-line positions are known to be unconditionally unstable in the absence of transverse flow variations. It is shown that ice-shelf buttressing can r...

Using distributed temperature sensors to monitor an Antarctic ice shelf and sub-ice-shelf cavity

Monitoring of ice-shelf and sub-ice-shelf ocean temperatures represents an important component in understanding ice-sheet stability. Continuous monitoring is challenging due to difficult surface access, difficulties in penetrating the ice shelf, and the need for long-term operation of nonrecoverable sensors. We aim to develop rapid lightweight drilling and near-continuous fiber-optic temperatur...