Warm Seawater Encroaches on Major Antarctic Ice Shelf

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By Sarah Stanley, Eos/AGU. 

Excerpt: The vast Antarctic Ice Sheet holds more than half of Earth’s freshwater. In several places around the continent, the ice extends over the ocean, where it forms large floating shelves. Observations suggest many of these ice shelves are thinning as they melt from below, with implications for ocean dynamics, global sea level, and Earth’s climate. For now, the Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf—one of Antarctica’s biggest, extending over the Weddell Sea—appears to be relatively stable, thanks to near-freezing currents circulating over the continental shelf beneath it. However, climate models predict that shifting ocean currents may bring warmer water to the continental shelf in the future. To gain a clearer picture of the Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf’s future, Steiger et al. analyzed water temperature and velocity data from 2017 to 2021. ...In this study, researchers found that the summertime flow of warm water occurs not just along the Filchner Trough but also along a second, smaller trough to the east and that the relative importance of each path varies from year to year. During warmer-than-average years, the warm water flows more rapidly across the continental shelf.... (Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans, https://doi.org/10.1029/2023JC020700, 2024). 

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