Glaciology Commons^™

On The Relative Importance Of Offshelf/Onshelf Drivers Of Variability In Mcdw Inventory On The Amundsen Shelf, Antarctica, Pierre St-Laurent, S. E. Stammerjohn, T. Maksym, R. M. Sherrell

Presentations

Ice shelves in the Amundsen Sea (west Antarctica) are melting rapidly and may raise global sea levels substantially over the coming century through reduced buttressing. The high basal melt rates are associated with the presence of warm modified Circumpolar Deep Water (mCDW) that intrudes across the continental shelf and melts the floating portion of the ice sheet from its base near the grounding zone. How much mCDW is present on the continental shelf (its volume inventory) is thus thought to be a key proxy for the year-to-year variability in ice shelf melt rates. Over the past decade, the literature has …