The Pine Island Glacier, along with its neighbour Thwaites glacier, connect the center of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet with the ocean, and together discharge significant quantities of ice into the ocean.
An international team of researchers led by the University of East Anglia in the UK uncovered a new process that contributes to the melting of Antarctic ice shelves. They found that adjacent ice shelves play a significant role in the instability of others downstream, Science Daily reports.
In addition, they discovered that a tiny ocean gyre or a network of rotating ocean currents near the Thwaites Ice Shelf could impact the quantity of glacial meltwater beneath ice shelves. When gyres are weak, more warm water could enter areas underneath and cause the glacier to melt.
Shallow Layers of Ocean Water Is Melting Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica
The Thwaites Ice Shelf is one of the largest ice shelves in West Antarctica, buttressing the eastern side of the Thwaites Glacier. However, it has been receding quickly over the last two decades and is the Antarctic glacier contributing the most to global sea-level rise.
Researchers used a unique dataset gathered through sensors put beneath the Thwaites Ice Shelf, which has likewise thinned and degraded greatly in recent decades. The team discovered that the shallow strata of the water beneath it warmed significantly between January 2020 and March 2021, as per a similar report from SciTech Daily.
They pointed out that most of this warming was due to seas containing a large volume of glacial meltwater moving into the region beneath the Thwaites Ice Shelf from the Pine Island Ice Shelf to the east.
When the ocean melts the base of ice shelves, glacial meltwater combines with seawater, forming a buoyant layer of water that is warmer than the surrounding waters. Unfortunately, this warmer water generates heat that melts the Thwaites Ice Shelf's base.
READ ALSO: Melting Antarctic Ice Sheet May Cause Sea Level Rise Greater Than Anticipated [Harvard Study]
New Process Impacting Ice Shelf Stability
Dr. Tiago Dotto, the lead author of the study from the Center of Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences at UEA, said they were able to identify another process that affects the stability of ice shelves that points to the importance of ocean circulation and sea ice.
In the study, titled "Ocean variability beneath Thwaites Eastern Ice Shelf driven by the Pine Island Bay Gyre strength" published in Nature Communications, researchers show that a great amount of heat at shallow layers beneath the ice shelf can come from other melting ice shelves nearby.
Dotto added that these atmosphere-sea-ice-ocean interactions significantly prolong warm periods beneath ice shelves by permitting warm and meltwater-enriched water to flow inside the adjacent ice shelves. The study points to gyres as potentially existing in other parts of Antarctica that could lead to more ice shelves melting due to intense basal melting linked to prolonged warm weather.
The sensors they installed inside the Thwaites Ice Shelf helped researchers to study how excess heat could have come from other ice shelves. They combined their data with computer simulations to determine the origin of this heat and found that it came from the Pine Island Ice Shelf, which explains how these waters could access Thwaites Ice Shelf.
Satellite images also confirmed that the summer season in 2020 and 2021 in the Southern Hemisphere was unusual because it has a high concentration of sea ice in places near the Thwaites Ice Shelf.
RELATED ARTICLE: Geothermal Activity Under Antarctic Ice Sheet Bring Thwaites Glacier on Brink of Collapse Due to Excessive Melting
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