Drivers of change of Thwaites Glacier, West Antarctica, between 1995 and 2015

Santos, Thiago Dias Dos, Barnes, Jowan M., Goldberg, Daniel N., Gudmundsson, G. Hilmar and Morlighem, Mathieu (2021) Drivers of change of Thwaites Glacier, West Antarctica, between 1995 and 2015. Geophysical Research Letters, 48 (20). e2021GL093102. ISSN 0094-8276

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Official URL: https://doi.org/10.1029/2021GL093102

Abstract

We run several transient numerical simulations applying these three perturbations individually. Our results show that ocean-induced ice-shelf thinning generates most of the observed grounding line retreat, inland speed-up, and mass loss, in agreement with previous work. We improve the agreement with observed inland speed-up and thinning by prescribing changes in ice-shelf geometry and a reduction in basal traction over areas that became ungrounded since 1995, suggesting that shelf breakups and thinning-induced reduction in basal traction play a critical role on Thwaites's dynamics, as pointed out by previous studies. These findings suggest that modeling Thwaites's future requires reliable ocean-induced melt estimates in models that respond accurately to downstream perturbations.

Item Type: Article
Additional Information: Funding information: This work is from the PROPHET project, a component of the Interna-tional Thwaites Glacier Collaboration (ITGC). Support from National Science Foundation (NSF: Grant #1739031) and Natural Environment Research Council (NERC: Grants NE/S006745/1 and NE/S006796/1). ITGC Contribution No. ITGC-023.
Subjects: F700 Ocean Sciences
F800 Physical and Terrestrial Geographical and Environmental Sciences
Department: Faculties > Engineering and Environment > Geography and Environmental Sciences
Depositing User: John Coen
Date Deposited: 20 Oct 2021 07:37
Last Modified: 30 Mar 2022 03:30
URI: http://nrl.northumbria.ac.uk/id/eprint/47516

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