Humming Ice Shelf Changes Its Seismic Tune with the Weather.
https://eos.org/research-spotlights/humming-ice-shelf-changes-its-seismic-tune-with-the-weather
Source: By Terri Cook, Eos/AGU.
Excerpt: Antarctica is ringed by ice shelves: vast, glacier-fed slabs of floating ice that can stretch hundreds of kilometers from the coastline into the sea. Because of their exposure to both the air above and the seawater below, ice shelves are considered more susceptible to rising global temperatures than either glaciers or continental ice sheets. Recent dramatic examples of ice shelf disintegration, including the collapse of 3,250 square kilometers of the Larsen B ice shelf in 2002 and the ensuing accelerated ice loss in nearby glaciers, have highlighted the potential for widespread ice loss from the southernmost continent. Understanding how Antarctic ice shelves respond to warming temperatures is thus crucial for calculating future global sea level rise, which could affect hundreds of millions of people or more. To investigate how ice shelves respond to atmospheric, oceanic, and other types of forcing, Chaput et al. conducted seismic observations at 34 stations distributed along two Ross ice shelf transects from November 2014 through February 2017. The resulting data revealed an unexpected discovery: a year-round pattern of high-frequency, wind-generated waves—akin to a steady dissonant hum—that are trapped within the upper layers of the shelf’s partially compacted surface....
Source: By Terri Cook, Eos/AGU.
Excerpt: Antarctica is ringed by ice shelves: vast, glacier-fed slabs of floating ice that can stretch hundreds of kilometers from the coastline into the sea. Because of their exposure to both the air above and the seawater below, ice shelves are considered more susceptible to rising global temperatures than either glaciers or continental ice sheets. Recent dramatic examples of ice shelf disintegration, including the collapse of 3,250 square kilometers of the Larsen B ice shelf in 2002 and the ensuing accelerated ice loss in nearby glaciers, have highlighted the potential for widespread ice loss from the southernmost continent. Understanding how Antarctic ice shelves respond to warming temperatures is thus crucial for calculating future global sea level rise, which could affect hundreds of millions of people or more. To investigate how ice shelves respond to atmospheric, oceanic, and other types of forcing, Chaput et al. conducted seismic observations at 34 stations distributed along two Ross ice shelf transects from November 2014 through February 2017. The resulting data revealed an unexpected discovery: a year-round pattern of high-frequency, wind-generated waves—akin to a steady dissonant hum—that are trapped within the upper layers of the shelf’s partially compacted surface....