Speaking: Vjeran Visnjevic, University of Tübingen, Germany
Full title: Assessing the Stability of Antarctic Ice Shelves: A Study on Ice Shelf Composition and their Susceptibility to Climate Changes
The seminar will be live on Zoom and open to anyone interested (limit of 500 participants). Register in advance for this meeting.
Abstract
Ice shelves surrounding Antarctica play a crucial role in buttressing the flow of ice from the continent towards the ocean, and their stability and evolution are governed by surface accumulation, basal melting, and ice dynamics. Due to climate change, the disintegration of these ice shelves can lead to a significant increase in ice discharge towards the ocean and a subsequent rise in global sea level, emphasising the importance of understanding their future stability.
In this study researchers present how combining radio stratigraphy data with ice flow modeling helps uncover the structure and composition of ice shelves. Using an ice-dynamic forward model that is both simple and observationally driven, validated on the Roi Baudouin Ice Shelf, researchers model the stratigraphy of all ice shelves around Antarctica and map spatial variations in the proportion of locally accumulated ice on the ice shelf (local meteoric ice - LMI) in comparison to the ice inflowing from the continental ice sheet (continental meteoric ice - CMI). Examining the differences between LMI and CMI dominated ice shelves, enables researchers to investigate the ice shelves susceptibility to projected atmospheric and oceanic changes in climate and discuss their stability.
Furthermore, by expanding the analysis to the continental scale, the researchers identify areas where climate change could have a significant impact on ice shelf geometry and composition.