Sensitivity of tidewater glaciers to submarine melting governed by plume locations
Abstract
The response of tidewater glaciers to ocean warming remains a key uncertainty in sea level rise predictions. Here we use a 3‐D numerical model to examine the response of an idealized tidewater glacier to spatial variations in submarine melt rate. While melting toward the center of the terminus causes only a localized increase in mass loss, melting near the lateral margins triggers increased calving across the width of the glacier, causing the terminus to retreat at several times the width‐averaged melt rate. This occurs because melting near the margins has a greater disruptive impact on the compressive stress arch that transfers resistance from the side walls to the body of the glacier. We suggest that the rate of terminus advance or retreat may thus be governed by the difference between ice velocity and submarine melting in the slow‐flowing zones away from the glacier center.
Citation
Cowton , T , Todd , J A & Benn , D I 2019 , ' Sensitivity of tidewater glaciers to submarine melting governed by plume locations ' , Geophysical Research Letters , vol. 46 , no. 20 , pp. 11219-11227 . https://doi.org/10.1029/2019GL084215
Publication
Geophysical Research Letters
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
0094-8276Type
Journal article
Rights
Copyright © 2019 American Geophysical Union. All Rights Reserved. This work has been made available online in accordance with publisher policies or with permission. Permission for further reuse of this content should be sought from the publisher or the rights holder. This is the final published version of the work, which was originally published at https://doi.org/10.1029/2019GL084215
Description
This work was funded by NERC award NE/P011365/1 (CALISMO: Calving laws for Ice Sheet Models) to PI Benn.Collections
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