Ancient pre-glacial erosion surfaces preserved beneath the West Antarctic Ice Sheet

Bacteria beneath the West Antarctic ice sheet.

Subglacial environments, particularly those that lie beneath polar ice sheets, are beginning to be recognized as an important part of Earth's biosphere. However, except for indirect indications of microbial assemblages in subglacial Lake Vostok, Antarctica, no sub-ice sheet environments have been shown to support microbial ecosystems. Here we report 16S rRNA gene and isolate diversity in sedime...

West Antarctic Ice Sheet Initiative

The ocean's influence upon and response to Antarctic ice sheet changes is considered in relation to sea level rise over recent and future decades. Assuming present-day ice fronts are in approximate equilibrium, a preliminary budget for the ice sheet is estimated from accumulation vs. iceberg calving and the basal melting that occurs beneath floating ice shelves. Iceberg calving is derived from ...

Evidence for elevated and spatially variable geothermal flux beneath the West Antarctic Ice Sheet.

Heterogeneous hydrologic, lithologic, and geologic basal boundary conditions can exert strong control on the evolution, stability, and sea level contribution of marine ice sheets. Geothermal flux is one of the most dynamically critical ice sheet boundary conditions but is extremely difficult to constrain at the scale required to understand and predict the behavior of rapidly changing glaciers. ...

The West Antarctic Ice Sheet and Sea Level Rise

Warm ocean is eroding West Antarctic Ice Sheet

[1] Satellite radar measurements show that ice shelves in Pine Island Bay have thinned by up to 5.5 m yr 1 over the past decade. The pattern of shelf thinning mirrors that of their grounded tributaries the Pine Island, Thwaites and Smith glaciers and ocean currents on average 0.5 C warmer than freezing appear to be the source. The synchronised imbalance of the inland glaciers is the result of r...