Volume 382: Iceberg Alley and Subantarctic Ice and Ocean Dynamics

Ocean-driven thinning enhances iceberg calving and retreat of Antarctic ice shelves.

Iceberg calving from all Antarctic ice shelves has never been directly measured, despite playing a crucial role in ice sheet mass balance. Rapid changes to iceberg calving naturally arise from the sporadic detachment of large tabular bergs but can also be triggered by climate forcing. Here we provide a direct empirical estimate of mass loss due to iceberg calving and melting from Antarctic ice ...

Signal: Sar for Ice, Glacier and Ocean Global Dynamics

Arctic Ocean sea ice volume: What explains its recent depletion?

[1] Various observations and model results point to an arctic sea ice cover that was extraordinarily thin in the 1990s. This thin ice cover was caused by a strengthened cyclonic circulation of wind and ice and by unusual warmth of springtime air temperatures. Here modeled sea ice volume is decomposed into two components: first, a dynamic or wind-forced response to interannually varying winds bu...

Polarimetric analysis of iceberg and sea ice radar backscattering mechanisms for iceberg detection

Multi-polarization synthetic aperture radar (SAR) systems are in particular useful for identification and separation of different scattering mechanisms and their sources in a medium (Oliver & Quegan, 1998, p. 319). The Canadian RADARSAT-2 (RS-2) carries a fullypolarimetric SAR system which measures intensities at VV, HH, HV and VH-polarizations as well as phase differences between the different...

Links between ocean temperature and iceberg discharge during Heinrich events

Palaeoclimate records have revealed the presence of millennial-scale climate oscillations throughout the last glacial period1. Six periods of extreme cooling in the Northern Hemisphere—known as Heinrich events—were marked by an enhanced discharge of icebergs into the North Atlantic Ocean2,3, increasing the deposition of ice-rafted debris2. Increased sliding at the base of ice sheets as a result...