Dømgaard Mads, Millan Romain, Andersen Jonas K, Scheuchl Bernd, Rignot Eric, Izeboud Maaike, Bernat Maud, Bjørk Anders A
Department of Geoscience and Natural Resource Management, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen K, Denmark.
Univ. Grenoble Alpes, IRD, CNRS, INRAE, Grenoble INP IGE, Grenoble, France.
Nat Commun. 2025 Apr 29;16(1):4016. doi: 10.1038/s41467-025-59293-1.
Ice shelves restrain grounded ice discharge into the ocean, and their break-up contributes significantly to Antarctica's sea level rise. Using aerial imagery from the 1960s and modern satellite data, we construct a long-term record of Wordie Ice Shelf's disintegration and its effects on tributary glaciers. Early changes in pinning points and ocean warming in Marguerite Bay since the 1960s strongly suggest increasing basal melt as the primary driver of the ice shelf disintegration. Some glaciers responded immediately to the ice shelf break-up, with surface velocities tripling, thinning up to 160 m, and grounding line retreat of 7.5 km, while others reacted decades later due to buttressing from remnant parts of the ice shelf. Our findings emphasize the importance of long-term observations to understand ice shelf disintegration and its impacts, offering crucial insights for assessments of future ice loss from the Antarctic Ice Sheet.
冰架抑制着陆地冰向海洋的排放，其崩解对南极洲海平面上升有显著影响。利用20世纪60年代的航空影像和现代卫星数据，我们构建了沃迪冰架解体及其对支流冰川影响的长期记录。自20世纪60年代以来，玛格丽特湾固定点的早期变化和海洋变暖强烈表明，底部融化加剧是冰架解体的主要驱动因素。一些冰川对冰架崩解立即做出反应，表面速度增加两倍，变薄达160米，接地线后退7.5公里，而其他冰川则由于冰架残余部分的支撑作用，几十年后才做出反应。我们的研究结果强调了长期观测对于理解冰架解体及其影响的重要性，为评估南极冰盖未来的冰损失提供了关键见解。
