video: Animation illustrating how horizontal motion of glacier grounding lines is detected using satellite measurements of their elevation change. view more
Credit: Hannes Konrad et al, University of Leeds
Antarctica's great ice sheet is losing ground as it is eroded by warm ocean water circulating beneath its floating edge, a new study has found.
Research by the UK Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling (CPOM) at the University of Leeds has produced the first complete map of how the ice sheet's submarine edge, or "grounding line", is shifting. Most Antarctic glaciers flow straight into the ocean in deep submarine troughs, the grounding line is the place where their base leaves the sea floor and begins to float.
Their study, published today in Nature Geoscience, shows that the Southern Ocean melted 1,463 km2 of Antarctica's underwater ice between 2010 and 2016 - an area the size of Greater London.
The team, led by Dr Hannes Konrad from the University of Leeds, found that grounding line retreat has been extreme at eight of the ice sheet's 65 biggest glaciers. The pace of deglaciation since the last ice age is roughly 25 metres per year. The retreat of the grounding line at these glaciers is more than five times that rate.
The biggest changes were seen in West Antarctica, where more than a fifth of the ice sheet has retreated across the sea floor faster than the pace of deglaciation.
Dr Konrad said: "Our study provides clear evidence that retreat is happening across the ice sheet due to ocean melting at its base, and not just at the few spots that have been mapped before now. This retreat has had a huge impact on inland glaciers, because releasing them from the sea bed removes friction, causing them to speed up and contribute to global sea level rise."
The researchers also found some unexpected behaviour. Although retreat of the Thwaites Glacier grounding line in West Antarctica has sped up, at the neighbouring Pine Island Glacier - until recently one of the fastest retreating on the continent - it has halted. This suggests that the ocean melting at its base may have paused.
Dr Konrad added: "These differences emphasise the complex nature of ice sheet instability across the continent, and being able to detect them helps us to pinpoint areas that deserve further investigation."
Grounding lines typically lie a kilometre or more below sea level and are inaccessible even to submersibles, so remote sensing methods for detecting them are extremely valuable.
The team were able to track the movement of Antarctica's grounding line using European Space Agency's CryoSat-2 across 16,000 km of the coastline. Although CryoSat-2 is designed to measure changes in the ice sheet elevation, these can be translated into horizontal motion at the grounding line using knowledge of the glacier and sea floor geometry and the Archimedes principle of buoyancy - which relates the thickness of floating ice to the height of its surface.
Study co-author Professor Andy Shepherd, from the School of Earth and Environment at Leeds, said: "We were delighted at how well CryoSat-2 is able to detect the motion of Antarctica's grounding lines. They are impossible places to access from below, and usually invisible on the ground, so it's a fantastic illustration of the value of satellite measurements for identifying and understanding environmental change."
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Further information:
Images and animation available for download: https://goo.gl/JXkX24
The paper Net retreat of Antarctic glacier grounding lines by Hannes Konrad, Andrew Shepherd, Lin Gilbert, Anna Hogg, Malcolm McMillan, Alan Muir and Thomas Slater is published 2 April in Nature Geoscience (DOI: 10.1038/s41561-018-0082-z).
Dr Konrad (hannes.konrad@awi.de) and Professor Shepherd (a.shepherd@leeds.ac.uk) are available for comment. Dr Konrad is now based at the Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany. Professor Shepherd is CPOM Director and Principal Scientific Advisor to ESA's CryoSat-2 mission.
Please contact University of Leeds press office pressoffice@leeds.ac.uk or +44(0)113 343 4031 for any additional information.
University of Leeds
The University of Leeds is one of the largest higher education institutions in the UK, with more than 33,000 students from more than 150 different countries, and a member of the Russell Group of research-intensive universities.
We are a top ten university for research and impact power in the UK, according to the 2014 Research Excellence Framework, and are in the top 100 for academic reputation in the QS World University Rankings 2018. Additionally, the University was awarded a Gold rating by the Government's Teaching Excellence Framework in 2017, recognising its 'consistently outstanding' teaching and learning provision. Twenty-six of our academics have been awarded National Teaching Fellowships - more than any other institution in England, Northern Ireland and Wales - reflecting the excellence of our teaching. http://www.leeds.ac.uk
The Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling (CPOM) provides UK National Capability in observing and modelling the cryosphere on behalf of the National Environment Research Council (NERC). CPOM combines satellite measurements with theoretical and numerical models to explain how Earth's ice, oceans and atmosphere interact, and to predict their behaviour over long periods and large scales. The CPOM Directorate is based at the University of Leeds.
Journal
Nature Geoscience