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Saturday, 5 July 2008

Antarctic Ice Shelf Vista

Antarctic Ice Shelf Vista



It's all gone but the mountains. Most of the sprawling landscape of ice that lies between the mountains visible above has now disintegrated. The above picture was taken in Antarctica from the top of Grey Nunatak, one of three Seal Nunatak mountains that border the Larsen B Ice-Shelf. The other two Nunataks are visible in the picture taken in 1994. Over the past several years large chunks of the 200-meter thick Larsen B Ice-Shelf have been breaking off and disintegrating. The cause is thought to be related to the local high temperatures of recent years and, possibly, global warming. Over the past few years, the area that has disintegrated is roughly the size of Luxembourg. A ice-shelves break up, they unblock other ice sheets that fall onto the ocean, raising sea levels everywhere. Scientists are watching the much-larger Ross Ice Shelf, which, if it collapses, could cause global sea levels to rise five meters.

 

12 June 2008

Ice Shelf Instability

Guest contribution from Mauri S. Pelto

Ice shelves are floating platforms of ice fed by mountain glaciers and ice sheets flowing from the land onto the ocean. The ice flows from the grounding line where it becomes floating to the seaward front, where icebergs calve. For a typical glacier when the climate warms the glacier merely retreats, reducing its low elevation, high melting area by increasing its mean elevation. An ice shelf is nearly flat and cannot retreat in this fashion. Ice shelves cannot persist unless the entire ice shelf is an accumulation zone, where snowpack does not completely melt even in the summer.

Ice shelves have long been recognized as keys in buttressing Antarctic Ice Sheets. In turn ice shelves rely on pinning points for buttressing. The pinning point are where the floating ice shelf meets solid ground, either at lateral margins or a subglacial rise meets the bottom of the ice shelf causing an ice rise on the shelf surface.

The recent collapse of Wordie Ice Shelf, Mueller Ice Shelf, Jones Ice Shelf, Larsen-A and Larsen-B Ice Shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula has made us aware of how dynamic ice shelve systems are. After their loss the reduced buttressing of feeder glaciers has allowed the expected speed-up of inland ice masses after shelf ice break-up. (Rignot and others, 2004).

Several recent papers examine the causes of breakup of both Larsen B and Wilkins Ice Shelf, which prompts a closer look at the role of surface melting, structural weakness development and ice shelf thinning in this process.

In 1995 a substantial section of the northern Larsen Ice Shelf broke up in a few days. This was the first glimpse at a rapid ice shelf collapse. The breakup followed a period of warming and ice shelf front retreat, prompting (Rott and others, 1996) to observe that “after an ice shelf retreats beyond a critical limit, it may collapse rapidly as a result of perturbated mass balance”.

During the austral summer of 2001/02, melting at the surface of Larsen Ice Shelf in the Antarctic Peninsula was three times in excess of the mean. This exceptional melt event was followed by the collapse of Larsen B Ice Shelf, during which 3,200 km2 of ice shelf surface was lost. That meltwater was playing a key role in collapse was underscored by the unusual number of melt ponds that existed that summer and that the new ice front after collapse close to the limit of surface meltponds seen in images leading up to the March event (Scambos and others, 2003).

The ice shelves actually collapse via rapid calving, and the physics connecting meltwater to calving is its ability to enhance crevasse propagation. When filled 90% or more with meltwater a sufficiently deep crevasse can overcome the overburden pressure that tends to close the crevasse at depth (Scambos and others, 2000). Days before the final Larsen break-up, it is evident that the crevasses cut through the entire ice shelf. It also appeared that large meltponds contracted indicating that they were beginning to drain though the crevasses to the sea (Scambos and others, 2003).

As scientists it would have been easy to close the book on the issue after identifying the meltwater process. However, detailed examinations have continued identifying other key elements in the tale of collapse. The decade prior to collapse the Larsen-B Ice Shelf had thinned primarily by melting of the ice shelf bottom by 18 m (Shepard and others, 2003). This preconditions the ice shelf to failure by weakening its connection to pinning points as the shelf becomes more buoyant. This goes back to the critical limit mentioned by Rott (1996).

Glasser and Scambos (2008) reexamined the Larsen Ice Shelf breakup for structural weaknesses and observed the following. They noted that the rifting and crevasses parallel to the ice front crosscut the meltwater channels and ponds, hence, post dating them. The number and length of the rifts increased markedly in the year before collapse. Substantial rifts also existed between tributary glaciers feeding the ice shelf as far as 40 km behind the ice front. Enlargement of and development of new rifts in these regions occurred in the year prior to collapse. Downstream of the tributary glacier junction there are no evidence of relict rifts, illustrating that these rifts are a feature of the last 20 years. After ice shelf collapse the ice front receded to the pre-existing rifts, and the pre-existing rifts defined the area of collapse. In this case the structural weaknesses preconditioned the ice to rapid breakup. Rift formation occurred in areas of velocity differences and natural weaknesses Velocity differences are largest between tributaries and near the ice front.

The latest example of a collapsing ice shelf is Wilkins Ice Shelf (WIS), which lost 425 km2 in late February and early March 2008. The dynamic nature of the WIS is examined by Braun, Humbert and Moll (2008), their findings are summarized below. WIS is buttressed by Alexander, Latady, Charcot and Rothschild Island and by numerous small ice rises, indicating subglacial contact. Recent history indicates that WIS experiences no continuous ordinary calving, but single break-up events of various magnitudes. They further show that drainage of melt ponds into crevasses were of no relevance for the break-up at WIS. On WIS the evolution of failure zones is associated with ice rises. Analysis of rifting indicated that in 1990 the central area of WIS did not have any substantial rifts. In 1993/94, rift formation started to expand at the northern ice front. Today, the central part of WIS is intersected by long rifts that formed in and around ice rises. The rifts can cover tens of kilometers. The evolution and coalescing of the rifts are followed by break-up events at the ice front. Hence, the connection of rift systems seems to be the trigger for collapse. The recent break-up has left a narrow 6 km wide; already fractured connection to Charcot Island in a sensitive area that is stabilizing the northern part of the ice shelf. A new rift connection formed between already existing fractures, crosses almost the entire northern shelf, which makes WIS even more fragile and vulnerable. This area of interconnected rifts is 2100 km2. An additional 3000 km2 of the 13 000km2 of WIS, is at risk if this connection to Charcot Island is lost as rifts around the Petrie Ice Rise indicate an area of weakness. The conclusion for WIS is pre-conditioning of the ice shelf by failure zones occurring at ice rises and triggered by break-up events are leading to a sequence cascade of failure.

Below you can see the evident rifts near Charcot Island in this March MODIS image and the narrow connection of the ice shelf to this pinning point. The lack of sea ice on the north facing ice front is also noteworthy.

It appears that ice shelf thinning is the key pre-conditioning factor for collapse. The mechanisms for ice shelf thinning include basal melting, meltwater production and rift development. These are interrelated mechanisms that pre-condition the ice shelves to collapse. This will be a key area of continued investigation to understand this critical process for the Antarctic Ice Sheet. At the moment it seems that the key process to rapid calving events is the rift development. Rift development is observed to begin at points of natural weakness. For both ice shelves prior to collapse an expansion of the area where rifts exists has been observed. In both cases this seems to result from pre-conditioning via thinning due to basal melt and surface melt. Rifts development is accentuated by water filling crevasses. A new study will be looking at the impact of reduced sea ice at the front as well (Scambos and Massom, 2008). It is obvious that the glaciologic community will be watching the Wilkins Ice Shelf next Austral summer.

References:

Rignot, E., Casassa, G., Gogineni, P., Krabill, W., Rivera, A., and Thomas, R. (2004). Accelerated ice discharge from the Antarctic Peninsula following the collapse of Larsen B Ice Shelf. Geophysical Research Letters 31: L18401, doi:10.1029/2004GL020697.
Scambos, T., Hulbe, C., Fahnestock, M. and Bohlander, J. (2000). The link between climate warming and break-up of ice shelves in the Antarctic Peninsula. Journal of Glaciology 46: 516–530.
Scambos, T., C. Hulbe, and M. Fahnestock (2003). Climate-induced ice shelf disintegration in the Antarctic Peninsula. In: Domack, E., Leventer, A. Burnett, A., R. Bindschadler, R., P.
Vaughan, D. G., Marshall, G. J., Connolley, W.M., Parkinson, C., Mulvaney, R., D., Hodgson, D.A., King, J.C., Pudsey, C.J. and Turner, J. (2003). Recent rapid regional climate warming on the Antarctic Peninsula. Climate Change 60: 243-274, 2003.