Abstract
Over the past two decades, Antarctic ice shelves have retreated, thinned and suffered catastrophic collapse. In this study we extended the 25-year long record of ice shelf thickness change in Antarctica, from 2010 to 2017. In the Amundsen Sea Sector where widespread ice shelf thinning dominates the signal, a 51% slowdown in the rate of ice loss over the last 7-years can be attributed to a coincident decrease in ocean temperatures in the region since 2010. Overall, ice shelves in Antarctica have thickened by an average of 1.3 m between 2010 and 2017 as ice losses from West Antarctica are compensated by ice gains in East Antarctica and the Antarctic Peninsula, reversing the negative trend of the previous two decades. The detailed spatial pattern of ice shelf thickness change across Antarctica, demonstrates the need for future investment in high spatial resolution observations and techniques.
Highlights
Floating ice shelves fringe 74% of Antarctica’s coastline, providing a direct link between the ice sheet and the surrounding oceans
Ice shelves in Antarctica have thickened by an average of 1.3 m between 2010 and 2017 as ice losses from West Antarctica are compensated by ice gains in East Antarctica and the Antarctic Peninsula, reversing the negative trend of the previous two decades
In the Amundsen Sea Embayment, ice shelves at the terminus of the Pine Island and Thwaites Glaciers have thinned at rates in excess of 5 m per year for more than two decades (Paolo et al, 2016). This signal has been attributed to long-term change in the amount of warm ocean water reaching and eroding the ice shelf base (Depoorter et al, 2013) (Paolo et al, 2018), and has coincided with an acceleration in the rate of ice lost from the grounded ice sheet (Konrad et al, 2017)
Summary
Floating ice shelves fringe 74% of Antarctica’s coastline, providing a direct link between the ice sheet and the surrounding oceans. In the Amundsen Sea Embayment, ice shelves at the terminus of the Pine Island and Thwaites Glaciers have thinned at rates in excess of 5 m per year for more than two decades (Paolo et al, 2016) This signal has been attributed to long-term change in the amount of warm ocean water reaching and eroding the ice shelf base (Depoorter et al, 2013) (Paolo et al, 2018), and has coincided with an acceleration in the rate of ice lost from the grounded ice sheet (Konrad et al, 2017). In other areas on the Antarctic Peninsula such as the Larsen-C ice shelf there is less certainty about the mechanism driving change as independent studies have identified both atmospheric and oceanographic processes to be dominant (Pritchard et al, 2012) (Shepherd et al, 2003) While these examples demonstrate that ice shelves can respond to change over short timescales, long data records are required to disentangle natural variability from longer term more permanent change. In this study we use CryoSat-2 satellite data to measure the continent wide pattern of ice shelf thickness change on all Antarctic ice shelves, at a relatively fine, 2 km spatial resolution
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