Abstract
Abstract. In recent decades, seven out of twelve ice shelves around the Antarctic Peninsula (AP) have either retreated significantly or have been almost entirely lost. At least some of these retreats have been shown to be unusual within the context of the Holocene and have been widely attributed to recent atmospheric and oceanic changes. To date, measurements of the area of ice shelves on the AP have either been approximated, or calculated for individual shelves over dissimilar time intervals. Here we present a new dataset containing up-to-date and consistent area calculations for each of the twelve ice shelves on the AP over the past five decades. The results reveal an overall reduction in total ice-shelf area by over 28 000 km2 since the beginning of the period. Individual ice shelves show different rates of retreat, ranging from slow but progressive retreat to abrupt collapse. We discuss the pertinent features of each ice shelf and also broad spatial and temporal patterns in the timing and rate of retreat. We believe that an understanding of this diversity and what it implies about the underlying dynamics and control will provide the best foundation for developing a reliable predictive skill for ice-shelf change.
Highlights
The changing position of the margin of the Antarctic ice sheet, both floating and grounded, is currently being mapped as part of the USGS Coastal-change and Glaciological Maps of Antarctica programme (Williams and Ferrigno, 1998)
Despite the episodic nature of the retreat of individual ice shelves, on the decadal timescale there has been a steady decline in total area of the Antarctic Peninsula ice shelves that began in the 1970s and continued to the present (Fig. 2)
The map presented by Morris and Vaughan was derived by a multivariate regression technique in which the mean residuals were approximately two degrees
Summary
The changing position of the margin of the Antarctic ice sheet, both floating and grounded, is currently being mapped as part of the USGS Coastal-change and Glaciological Maps of Antarctica programme (Williams and Ferrigno, 1998). As part of this programme, a comprehensive time-series of icefront changes around the Antarctic Peninsula was compiled from sources dating from 1940 to 2002 (Cook et al, 2005). The question remains as to whether future ice-shelf change, not just around the Antarctic Peninsula, will be dominated by oceanographic or atmospheric drivers of change
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