The Influence of Pine Island Ice Shelf Calving on Basal Melting

How ice shelf morphology controls basal melting

[1] The response of ice shelf basal melting to climate is a function of ocean temperature, circulation, and mixing in the open ocean and the coupling of this external forcing to the sub–ice shelf circulation. Because slope strongly influences the properties of buoyancy-driven flow near the ice shelf base, ice shelf morphology plays a critical role in linking external, subsurface heat sources to...

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...

Calving and rifting on the McMurdo Ice Shelf, Antarctica

On 2 March 2016, several small en échelon tabular icebergs calved from the seaward front of the McMurdo Ice Shelf, and a previously inactive rift widened and propagated by ∼3 km, ∼25% of its previous length, setting the stage for the future calving of a∼14 km iceberg. Within 24 h of these events, all remaining land-fast sea ice that had been stabilizing the ice shelf broke-up. The events were w...

Impact of Tide-Topography Interactions on Basal Melting of Larsen C Ice Shelf, Antarctica

Modelling the response of ice shelf basal melting to different ocean cavity environmental regimes

We present simulation results from a version of the Regional OceanModeling Systemmodified for ice shelf/ocean interaction, including the parameterisation of basal melting bymolecular diffusion alone. Simulations investigate the differences in melting for an idealised ice shelf experiencing a range of cold to hot ocean cavity conditions. Both the pattern of melt and the location of maximummelt s...