Abstract
Creep or shear heating instability is shown to be a plausible means of initiating a surge of the East Antarctic ice sheet and plunging the Earth into an ice age. The occurrence of this instability requires only that the ice thickness exceed a critical value which may not be much larger than the present ice dome thickness. Creep instability can occur on the fast time scale of 100–1,000 yr required by inferences of past rapid cooling events and sudden rises of sea level before the onset of Northern Hemisphere glaciations.
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