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Delicate seafloor landforms reveal past Antarctic grounding-line retreat of kilometers per year.

Accepted version
Peer-reviewed

Type

Article

Change log

Abstract

A suite of grounding-line landforms on the Antarctic seafloor, imaged at submeter horizontal resolution from an autonomous underwater vehicle, enables calculation of ice sheet retreat rates from a complex of grounding-zone wedges on the Larsen continental shelf, western Weddell Sea. The landforms are delicate sets of up to 90 ridges, <1.5 meters high and spaced 20 to 25 meters apart. We interpret these ridges as the product of squeezing up of soft sediment during the rise and fall of the retreating ice sheet grounding line during successive tidal cycles. Grounding-line retreat rates of 40 to 50 meters per day (>10 kilometers per year) are inferred during regional deglaciation of the Larsen shelf. If repeated today, such rapid mass loss to the ocean would have clear implications for increasing the rate of global sea level rise.

Description

Keywords

37 Earth Sciences, 3709 Physical Geography and Environmental Geoscience, 3705 Geology, 13 Climate Action

Journal Title

Science

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

0036-8075
1095-9203

Volume Title

368

Publisher

American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)

Rights

All rights reserved