Acceleration of Pine Island and Thwaites Glaciers, West Antarctica

By Eric J. M. Rignot, D. Vaughan, M. Schmeltz, T. Dupont, D. Macayeal. Annals of Glaciology, 2002

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Abstract Recent satellite investigations revealed that in the 1990s the grounding line of Pine Island and Thwaites Glaciers, West Antarctica, retreated several km, the ice surface on the interior of the basins lowered 10 cm a–1, and Pine Island Glacier thinned 1.6 ma–1. These observations, however, were not sufficient to determine the cause of the changes. Here, we present satellite radar interferometry data that show the thinning and retreat of Pine Island Glacier are caused by an acceleration of ice flow of about 18 ± 2% in 8 years. Thwaites Glacier maintained a nearly constant flow regime at its center, but widened along the sides, and increased its 30 ± 15% mass deficit by another 4% in 4 years. The combined mass loss from both glaciers, if correct, contributes an estimated 0.08 ± 0.03 mma–1 global sea-level rise in 2000.

Subfields: Atmospheric Science, Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law, Pulmonary and Respiratory Medicine

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/541b2ea1fe65b0303b13e56919ef902855741ba3

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Citations in the corpus

Ice sheet grounding line dynamics: Steady states, stability, and hysteresis (2007, background): “Present-day overdeepenings there which may be susceptible to grounding line retreat include the widely studied Pine Island Glacier [e.g., Rignot et al., 2002; Schmeltz et al., 2002; Payne et al., 2004].”
Grounding line movement and ice shelf buttressing in marine ice sheets (2009, background): “Both thinning and grounding line retreat have been observed in West Antarctica in recent years [Rignot et al., 2002].”
Marine ice sheet dynamics: Hysteresis and neutral equilibrium (2009, background): “0148-0227/09/2008JF001170 F03009 1 of 10 deepens considerably inland and show considerable retreat of their grounding line during the last decade [Rignot, 1998; Rignot et al., 2002; Payne et al., 2004].”