Disintegration and Buttressing Effect of the Landfast Sea Ice in the Larsen B Embayment, Antarctic Peninsula

Abstract The speed‐up of glaciers following ice shelf collapse can accelerate mass loss dramatically. Investigating the deformation landfast sea enables studying its resistive (buttressing) stresses and mechanisms driving collapse. Here, we apply offset tracking to Sentinel‐1A/B synthetic aperture radar data obtain a 2014–2022 time‐series horizontal velocity strain rate fields filling embayment formerly covered by Larsen B Ice Shelf, Antarctic Peninsula until 2002. disintegrated in 2022, find that it was precipitated few large opening rifts. Grounded did not instantaneously after collapse, which implies little buttressing effect from ice, conclusion also supported near‐zero correlation between glacier area. Our observations suggest are unlikely be recovered over sub‐decadal timescales an shelf.