Impact of West Antarctic ice shelf melting on Southern Ocean hydrography

Antarctic Ice Sheet fertilises the Southern Ocean

Southern Ocean (SO) marine primary productivity (PP) is strongly influenced by the availability of iron in surface waters, which is thought to exert a significant control upon atmospheric CO2 concentrations on glacial/interglacial timescales. The zone bordering the Antarctic Ice Sheet exhibits high PP and seasonal plankton blooms in response to light and variations in iron availability. The sou...

Response of Southern Ocean circulation to global warming may enhance basal ice shelf melting around Antarctica

We investigate the large-scale oceanic features determining the future ice shelf–ocean interaction by analyzing global warming experiments in a coarse resolution climate model with a comprehensive ocean component. Heat and freshwater fluxes from basal ice shelf melting (ISM) are parameterized following Beckmann and Goosse [Ocean Model 5(2):157–170, 2003]. Melting sensitivities to the oceanic te...

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...

Ice shelf changes on the Antarctic Peninsula

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...