Title Marine ice in Larsen Ice Shelf
Author Holland, P.R.; Corr, H.F.J.; Vaughan, D.G.; Jenkins, A.; Skvarca, P.
Author Affil Holland, P.R., British Antarctic Survey, Cambridge, United Kingdom. Other: Instituto Antártico Argentino, Argentina
Source Geophysical Research Letters, 36(11), Citation L11604. Publisher: American Geophysical Union, Washington, DC, United States. ISSN: 0094-8276
Publication Date 2009
Notes In English. 31 refs. GeoRef Acc. No: 301252. CRREL Acc. No: 64005560
Index Terms aerial surveys; airborne radar; freezing; glacial geology; ice; ice shelves; ocean environments; radar; temperature; Antarctica--Larsen Ice Shelf; airborne methods; Antarctic Peninsula; Antarctica; bottom currents; currents; Global Positioning System; ice streams; imagery; Larsen Ice Shelf; marine environment; radar methods; sea ice; Weddell Deep Water
Abstract It is argued that Larsen Ice Shelf contains marine ice formed by oceanic freezing and other mechanisms. Missing basal returns in airborne radar soundings and observations of a smooth and healed surface coincide downstream of regions where an ocean model predicts freezing. Visible imagery suggests that marine ice currently stabilizes Larsen C Ice Shelf and implicates failure of marine flow bands in the 2002 Larsen B Ice Shelf collapse. Ocean modeling indicates that any regime change towards the incursion of warmer Modified Weddell Deep Water into the Larsen C cavity could curtail basal freezing and its stabilizing influence.
URL http://hdl.handle.net/10.1029/2009GL038162
Publication Type journal article
Record ID 88872