Rapid accelerations of Antarctic Peninsula outlet glaciers driven by surface melt
Abstract
Atmospheric warming is increasing surface melting across the Antarctic Peninsula, with unknown impacts upon glacier dynamics at the ice-bed interface. Using high-resolution satellite-derived ice velocity data, optical satellite imagery and regional climate modelling, we show that drainage of surface meltwater to the bed of outlet glaciers on the Antarctic Peninsula occurs and triggers rapid ice flow accelerations (up to 100% greater than the annual mean). This provides a mechanism for this sector of the Antarctic Ice Sheet to respond rapidly to atmospheric warming. We infer that delivery of water to the bed transiently increases basal water pressure, enhancing basal motion, but efficient evacuation subsequently reduces water pressure causing ice deceleration. Currently, melt events are sporadic, so efficient subglacial drainage cannot be maintained, resulting in multiple short-lived (<6 day) ice flow perturbations. Future increases in meltwater could induce a shift to a glacier dynamic regime characterised by seasonal-scale hydrologically-driven ice flow variations.
Citation
Tuckett , P A , Ely , J C , Sole , A J , Livingstone , S J , Davison , B J , Melchior van Wessem , J & Howard , J 2019 , ' Rapid accelerations of Antarctic Peninsula outlet glaciers driven by surface melt ' , Nature Communications , vol. 10 , 4311 . https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-12039-2
Publication
Nature Communications
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
2041-1723Type
Journal article
Rights
Copyright © The Author(s) 2019. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
Description
J.C.E. acknowledges a NERC independent research fellowship grant number NE/R014574/1. J.M.W. acknowledges financial contributions made by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (grant 866.15.201) and the Netherlands Earth System Science Center (NESSC).Collections
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