Role of off-shelf to on-shelf transitions for East Antarctic sea ice dynamics during spring 2003

Important role for ocean warming and increased ice-shelf melt in Antarctic sea-ice expansion

Changes in sea ice significantly modulate climate change because of its high reflective and strong insulating nature. In contrast to Arctic sea ice, sea ice surrounding Antarctica has expanded1, with record extent2 in 2010. This ice expansion has previously been attributed to dynamical atmospheric changes that induce atmospheric cooling3. Here we show that accelerated basal melting of Antarctic...

Algal Clues to Antarctic Ice Shelf Ages

1111 Algal Clues to Antarctic Ice Shelf Ages The naturally high variability of sea ice extent in Antarctica and the short duration of instrumental records have combined to obscure any clear record of sea ice coverage change. Curran et al. (p. 1203; see the Perspective by Wolff) present an ice core record of methanesulfonic acid, a species produced by algae living at the edges of ice shelves, wh...

Ice shelf changes on the Antarctic Peninsula

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...

Recent climate tendencies on an East Antarctic ice shelf inferred from a shallow firn core network

Nearly three decades of stable isotope ratios and surface mass balance (SMB) data from eight shallow firn cores retrieved at Fimbul Ice Shelf, East Antarctica, in the Austral summers 2009-2011 have been investigated. An additional longer core drilled in 2000/2001 extends the series back to the early eighteenth century. Isotope ratios and SMB from the stacked record of all cores were also relate...