Examination of upstream flow dynamics in response to the front retreat of ice shelves with different geometric configurations

Abstract:

Ice shelves fringe ~75% of Antarctica’s coastline, nourished by numerous terrestrial glacier systems. The ice-shelf disintegrations in recent decades and the observed thinning trends have revealed their susceptibility to the atmospheric and oceanic changes in the climate warming context. The buttressing effect of an ice shelf constrains the ice discharge of its upstream land ice, thus regulating the contribution to sea level of the terrestrial glaciers. The important role of ice shelves in stabilizing the upstream glacier flow dynamics is emphasized by the rapid accelerations and thinning of the tributary glaciers in response to the collapses of the northern Larsen Ice Shelf in Antarctic Peninsula. However, this buttressing effect is determined by the stress balance conditions of an ice shelf, which is further affected by the ice-shelf geometric configurations. The ice shelves confined by fjords, islands, promontories or seabed topographic highs exert greater buttressing effects than those less confined by the lateral or basal shear stresses. This research aims to assess the influences of different ice-shelf configurations on upstream flow dynamics in response to large ice-shelf retreat events. By using remotely sensed imagery acquired by multiple satellite missions, we derived the time series surface velocity records for the Larsen B glacier-ice shelf system in Antarctic Peninsula during 1995 – 2015 and for the Mertz glacier-ice shelf system in East Antarctica during 1997 – 2015, respectively. The former was well confined in the embayment, while the latter is unconfined by lateral margins. We compared the different temporal variation patterns in flow dynamics between these two sites before and after their large retreating events, i.e. the collapse event of Larsen B Ice Shelf in 2002 and the large calving event of Mertz Ice Shelf in 2010. The surface velocity profiles reveal the less sensitivity of upstream responses to the front retreat for the Mertz Ice Shelf.