Is the East Antarctic ice sheet stable?

2011 ◽  
Vol 75 (3) ◽  
pp. 417-429 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katherine Pingree ◽  
Max Lurie ◽  
Terence Hughes
Keyword(s):  
Sea Level ◽  
Ice Sheet ◽  
Drainage System ◽  
Ice Streams ◽  
The West ◽  
Antarctic Ice Sheet ◽  
West Antarctic Ice Sheet ◽  
West Antarctic ◽  
Global Sea Level ◽  
East Antarctic Ice Sheet

AbstractThe Greenland and East and West Antarctic ice sheets are assessed as being the source of ice that produced an Eemian sea level 6 m higher than present sea level. The most probable source is total collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet accompanied by partial collapse of the adjacent sector of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet in direct contact with the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. This conclusion is reached by applying a simple formula relating the “floating fraction” of ice along flowlines to ice height above the bed. Increasing the floating fraction lowered ice elevations enough to contribute up to 4.7 m to global sea level. Adding 3.3 m resulting from total collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet accounts for the higher Eemian sea level. Partial gravitational collapse that produced the present ice drainage system of Amery Ice Shelf contributes 2.3 m to global sea level. These results cast doubt on the presumed stability of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet, but destabilizing mechanisms remain largely unknown. Possibilities include glacial surges and marine instabilities at the respective head and foot of ice streams.

A Model for Holocene Retreat of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet

1978 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 150-170 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert H. Thomas ◽  
Charles R. Bentley
Keyword(s):  
Sea Level ◽  
Ice Sheet ◽  
Ice Shelf ◽  
Ice Streams ◽  
The West ◽  
Antarctic Ice Sheet ◽  
West Antarctic Ice Sheet ◽  
Ice Shelves ◽  
Ross Ice Shelf ◽  
West Antarctic

Marine ice sheets are grounded on land which was below sea level before it became depressed under the ice-sheet load. They are inherently unstable and, because of bedrock topography after depression, the collapse of a marine ice sheet may be very rapid. In this paper equations are derived that can be used to make a quantitative estimate of the maximum size of a marine ice sheet and of when and how rapidly retreat would take place under prescribed conditions. Ice-sheet growth is favored by falling sea level and uplift of the seabed. In most cases the buttressing effect of a partially grounded ice shelf is a prerequisite for maximum growth out to the edge of the continental shelf. Collapse is triggered most easily by eustatic rise in sea level, but it is possible that the ice sheet may self-destruct by depressing the edge of the continental shelf so that sea depth is increased at the equilibrium grounding line.Application of the equations to a hypothetical “Ross Ice Sheet” that 18,000 yr ago may have covered the present-day Ross Ice Shelf indicates that, if the ice sheet existed, it probably extended to a line of sills parallel to the edge of the Ross Sea continental shelf. By allowing world sea level to rise from its late-Wisconsin minimum it was possible to calculate retreat rates for individual ice streams that drained the “Ross Ice Sheet.” For all the models tested, retreat began soon after sea level began to rise (∼15,000 yr B.P.). The first 100 km of retreat took between 1500 and 2500 yr but then retreat rates rapidly accelerated to between 0.5 and 25 km yr−1, depending on whether an ice shelf was present or not, with corresponding ice velocities across the grounding line of 4 to 70 km yr−1. All models indicate that most of the present-day Ross Ice Shelf was free of grounded ice by about 7000 yr B.P. As the ice streams retreated floating ice shelves may have formed between promontories of slowly collapsing stagnant ice left behind by the rapidly retreating ice streams. If ice shelves did not form during retreat then the analysis indicates that most of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet would have collapsed by 9000 yr B.P. Thus, the present-day Ross Ice Shelf (and probably the Ronne Ice Shelf) serves to stabilize the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, which would collapse very rapidly if the ice shelves were removed. This provides support for the suggestion that the 6-m sea-level high during the Sangamon Interglacial was caused by collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet after climatic warming had sufficiently weakened the ice shelves. Since the West Antarctic Ice Sheet still exists it seems likely that ice shelves did form during Holocene retreat. Their effect was to slow and, finally, to halt retreat. The models that best fit available data require a rather low shear stress between the ice shelf and its sides, and this implies that rapid shear in this region encouraged the formation of a band of ice with a preferred crystal fabric, as appears to be happening today in the floating portions of fast bounded glaciers.Rebound of the seabed after the ice sheet had retreated to an equilibrium position would allow the ice sheet to advance once more. This may be taking place today since analysis of data from the Ross Ice Shelf indicates that the southeast corner is probably growing thicker with time, and if this persists then large areas of ice shelf must become grounded. This would restrict drainage from West Antarctic ice streams which would tend to thicken and advance their grounding lines into the ice shelf.

scholarly journals Actively surging West Antarctic ice streams and their response characteristics

1997 ◽  
Vol 24 ◽  
pp. 409-414 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Bindschadler
Keyword(s):  
Behavior Pattern ◽  
Accumulation Rate ◽  
Ice Sheet ◽  
Ice Streams ◽  
The West ◽  
Antarctic Ice Sheet ◽  
Thickness Change ◽  
West Antarctic Ice Sheet ◽  
Response Characteristics ◽  
West Antarctic

Ice Streams B, D and E, West Antarctica, all show a longitudinal pattern of ice thickness change that is consistent with ongoing surge behavior modeled for glaciers. The measured pattern is not consistent with model response of any other scenario such as accumulation-rate change or changes on the ice shelf. Inland migration of the ice-stream onset is a requirement of this behavior pattern. If such a surge is presently taking place, the remaining lifetime of the West Antarctic ice sheet is 1200–6000 years. A complete surge period lasting 50 000–120 000 years is hypothesized, with a relatively brief surge phase (lasting 16000–21 000 years) required to completely remove the West Antarctic ice sheet from its maximum extent. Applying classic glacier response theory demonstrates that the diffusive component of response is much faster for ice streams than for glaciers, making the identification of either kinematic waves or localized responses on ice streams unlikely.

scholarly journals Precipitation Ansatz dependent Future Sea Level Contribution by Antarctica based on CMIP5 Model Forcing

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian B. Rodehacke ◽  
Madlene Pfeiffer ◽  
Tido Semmler ◽  
Özgür Gurses ◽  
Thomas Kleiner
Keyword(s):  
Boundary Condition ◽  
Sea Level ◽  
Ice Sheet ◽  
Cmip5 Models ◽  
The West ◽  
Antarctic Ice Sheet ◽  
West Antarctic Ice Sheet ◽  
West Antarctic ◽  
Precipitation Boundary ◽  
Climate Forcings

Abstract. Various observational estimates indicate growing mass loss at Antarctica's margins but also heavier precipitation across the continent. In the future, heavier precipitation fallen on Antarctica will counteract any stronger iceberg discharge and increased basal melting of floating ice shelves driven by a warming ocean. Here, we use from nine CMIP5 models future projections, ranging from strong mitigation efforts to business-as-usual, to run an ensemble of ice-sheet simulations. We test, how the precipitation boundary condition determines Antarctica's sea-level contribution. The spatial and temporal varying climate forcings drive ice-sheet simulations. Hence, our ensemble inherits all spatial and temporal climate patterns, which is in contrast to a spatial mean forcing. Regardless of the applied boundary condition and forcing, some areas will lose ice in the future, such as the glaciers from the West Antarctic Ice Sheet draining into the Amundsen Sea. In general the simulated ice-sheet thickness grows in a broad marginal strip, where incoming storms deliver topographically controlled precipitation. This strip shows the largest ice thickness differences between the applied precipitation boundary conditions too. On average Antarctica's ice mass shrinks for all future scenarios if the precipitation is scaled by the spatial temperature anomalies coming from the CMIP5 models. In this approach, we use the relative precipitation increment per degree warming as invariant scaling constant. In contrast, Antarctica gains mass in our simulations if we apply the simulated precipitation anomalies of the CMIP5 models directly. Here, the scaling factors show a distinct spatial pattern across Antarctica. Furthermore, the diagnosed mean scaling across all considered climate forcings is larger than the values deduced from ice cores. In general, the scaling is higher across the East Antarctic Ice Sheet, lower across the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, and lowest around the Siple Coast. The latter is located on the east side of the Ross Ice Shelf.

scholarly journals Combustion of available fossil fuel resources sufficient to eliminate the Antarctic Ice Sheet

2015 ◽  
Vol 1 (8) ◽  
pp. e1500589 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ricarda Winkelmann ◽  
Anders Levermann ◽  
Andy Ridgwell ◽  
Ken Caldeira
Keyword(s):  
Sea Level Rise ◽  
Sea Level ◽  
Carbon Emissions ◽  
Fossil Fuel ◽  
Ice Sheet ◽  
Antarctic Ice Sheet ◽  
West Antarctic Ice Sheet ◽  
West Antarctic ◽  
Global Sea Level ◽  
The Antarctic

The Antarctic Ice Sheet stores water equivalent to 58 m in global sea-level rise. We show in simulations using the Parallel Ice Sheet Model that burning the currently attainable fossil fuel resources is sufficient to eliminate the ice sheet. With cumulative fossil fuel emissions of 10,000 gigatonnes of carbon (GtC), Antarctica is projected to become almost ice-free with an average contribution to sea-level rise exceeding 3 m per century during the first millennium. Consistent with recent observations and simulations, the West Antarctic Ice Sheet becomes unstable with 600 to 800 GtC of additional carbon emissions. Beyond this additional carbon release, the destabilization of ice basins in both West and East Antarctica results in a threshold increase in global sea level. Unabated carbon emissions thus threaten the Antarctic Ice Sheet in its entirety with associated sea-level rise that far exceeds that of all other possible sources.

The environment and evolution of the West Antarctic ice sheet: setting the stage

2006 ◽  
Vol 364 (1844) ◽  
pp. 1583-1605 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Bindschadler
Keyword(s):  
Flow Direction ◽  
Ice Sheet ◽  
Water System ◽  
Quantitative Prediction ◽  
Ice Streams ◽  
The West ◽  
Antarctic Ice Sheet ◽  
Quarter Century ◽  
West Antarctic Ice Sheet ◽  
West Antarctic

The West Antarctic ice sheet is the last ice sheet of the type cradled in a warm, marine geologic basin. Its perimeter stretches into the surrounding seas allowing warmer ocean waters to reach the undersides of its floating ice shelves and its relatively low surface elevation permits snow-carrying storms to extend well into its interior. This special environment has given rise to theories of impending collapse and for the past quarter-century has challenged researchers who seek a quantitative prediction of its future behaviour and the corresponding effect on sea level. Observations confirm changes on a variety of time scales from the quaternary to less than a minute. The dynamics of the ice sheet involve the complex interaction of ice that is warm at its base and cold along the margins of ice streams; subglacial till that is composed of a combination of marine sediment and eroded sedimentary rocks; and water that moves primarily between the ice and bed, but whose flow direction can differ from the direction of ice motion. The pressure of the water system is often sufficient to float the ice sheet locally and small changes in the amount of water in the till can cause it to rapidly switch from very weak to very stiff.

scholarly journals Rapid sea-level rise from a West Antarctic ice-sheet collapse: a short-term perspective

1998 ◽  
Vol 44 (146) ◽  
pp. 157-163
Author(s):  
Charles R. Bentley
Keyword(s):  
Sea Level ◽  
Rapid Change ◽  
Ice Sheet ◽  
Personal Perspective ◽  
Rapid Rise ◽  
Ice Shelf ◽  
Ice Streams ◽  
Antarctic Ice Sheet ◽  
West Antarctic Ice Sheet ◽  
West Antarctic

AbstractWill worldwide sea level soon rise rapidly because of a shrinkage of the West Antarctic ice sheet (WAIS)? Here I give a personal perspective of that probability. The crucial question is not whether large changes in ice mass can occur, but how likely it is that a large, rapid change, say a several-fold increase in the 20th-century rate of about 2 mm a-1, will occur in the next century or two from a West Antarctic cause.Twenty years ago Weertman proposed that a marine ice sheet is inherently unstable. But Weertman’s analysis was based on a simple model of a marine ice sheet that did not include fast-flowing, wet-based ice streams, which are now known to dominate the grounded ice sheet. Modern analyses do not definitively determine just how ice streams affect the stability of the WAIS, but it can at least be said that there is no compelling theoretical reason to expect a rapid rise in sea level from the WAIS triggered by ice-shelf thinning.Of the three main ice-drainage systems in the WAIS, the one that flows into Pine Island Bay might be a particularly likely site for accelerated flow since there is no ice shelf to restrain the inflowing ice streams, yet measurements show that this system is not significantly out of mass balance. If the “Ross Embayment” system, which has undergone several sudden glacial reorganizations in the last thousand years, were unstable one might expect a history of large changes in the total outflow of ice into the Ross Ice Shelf, yet the total outflow in the “Ross Embayment” has remained relatively unchanged despite the large internal perturbations, a fact that, points to a stable, not an unstable, system. Study of the third major drainage from the WAIS, into the Ronne Ice Shelf, also suggests that there is no gross discordance between the present velocity vectors and flow tracers in the ice shelf, although the evidence is limited.In the light of the evidence for recent stability, it is difficult to see how climate warming (whether anthropogenic or natural) could trigger a collapse of the WAIS in the next century or two. Thus, I believe that a rapid rise in sea level in the next century or two from a West Antarctic cause could only occur if a natural (not induced) collapse of the WAIS were imminent. Based on a concept of pseudo-random collapse once per major glacial cycle, I estimate the chances of that to be on the order of one in a thousand.

scholarly journals Sea-level projections representing the deeply uncertain contribution of the West Antarctic ice sheet

2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander M. R. Bakker ◽  
Tony E. Wong ◽  
Kelsey L. Ruckert ◽  
Klaus Keller
Keyword(s):  
Sea Level ◽  
Ice Sheet ◽  
The West ◽  
Antarctic Ice Sheet ◽  
West Antarctic Ice Sheet ◽  
West Antarctic

scholarly journals Thermal regime and dynamics of the West Antarctic ice sheet

2004 ◽  
Vol 39 ◽  
pp. 85-92 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hermann Engelhardt
Keyword(s):  
Basal Layer ◽  
Ice Sheet ◽  
Ice Streams ◽  
The West ◽  
Antarctic Ice Sheet ◽  
West Antarctic Ice Sheet ◽  
West Antarctic ◽  
Ice Stream ◽  
Whillans Ice Stream ◽  
Kamb Ice Stream

AbstractThe temperature–depth profiles measured in 22 boreholes drilled on the West Antarctic ice sheet exhibit two distinctly different thermal states of its basal ice. The warm state shows on Siple Dome and on Whillans Ice Stream. A relatively colder state, found at the Unicorn, Kamb Ice Stream (former Ice Stream C) and Bindschadler Ice Stream (former Ice Stream D), has basal temperature gradients greater than 50 K km–1. A large block of cold ice stranded and frozen to the bed at the Unicorn and simultaneously much warmer ice existing only a few kilometers across the Dragon shear margin in fast-moving Alley Ice Stream (former Ice Stream B2) poses a paradox. The relatively cold ice at the Unicorn must have come from a source different from the present Whillans Ice Stream catchment area. It is hypothesized that the Unicorn paradox was created by a super-surge. Also, the stagnant Siple Ice Stream, many relict shear margins, cold patches of ice at the Crary Ice Rise, ice rafts embedded in the Ross Ice Shelf, all point to a major event triggered either by an internal instability or by a subareal volcanic eruption. Most of these features appeared to have been formed about 500 years ago. Subsequent freeze-on of a 10–20m thick basal layer of debris-laden ice and water loss caused a slowdown of ice streams and, in the case of Kamb Ice Stream, an almost complete stoppage.

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