Abstract
AbstractWest Antarctica has experienced dramatic ice losses contributing to global sea-level rise in recent decades, particularly from Pine Island and Thwaites glaciers. Although these ice losses manifest an ongoing Marine Ice Sheet Instability, projections of their future rate are confounded by limited observations along West Antarctica’s coastal perimeter with respect to how the pace of retreat can be modulated by variations in climate forcing. Here, we derive a comprehensive, 12-year record of glacier retreat around West Antarctica’s Pacific-facing margin and compare this dataset to contemporaneous estimates of ice flow, mass loss, the state of the Southern Ocean and the atmosphere. Between 2003 and 2015, rates of glacier retreat and acceleration were extensive along the Bellingshausen Sea coastline, but slowed along the Amundsen Sea. We attribute this to an interdecadal suppression of westerly winds in the Amundsen Sea, which reduced warm water inflow to the Amundsen Sea Embayment. Our results provide direct observations that the pace, magnitude and extent of ice destabilization around West Antarctica vary by location, with the Amundsen Sea response most sensitive to interdecadal atmosphere-ocean variability. Thus, model projections accounting for regionally resolved ice-ocean-atmosphere interactions will be important for predicting accurately the short-term evolution of the Antarctic Ice Sheet.
Funder
RCUK | Natural Environment Research Council
Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland
Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation
Scottish Alliance for Geoscience, Environment and Society
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Subject
General Physics and Astronomy,General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology,General Chemistry,Multidisciplinary
Cited by
3 articles.
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