Ice stream or not? Radio-echo sounding of Carlson Inlet, West Antarctica

King, Edward ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3793-3915. 2011 Ice stream or not? Radio-echo sounding of Carlson Inlet, West Antarctica. The Cryosphere, 5 (4). 907-916. 10.5194/tc-5-907-2011

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Abstract/Summary

The Antarctic Ice Sheet loses mass to the surrounding ocean mainly by drainage through a network of ice streams: fast-flowing glaciers bounded on either side by ice flowing one or two orders of magnitude more slowly. Ice streams flow despite low driving stress because of low basal resistance but are known to cease flowing if the basal conditions change, which can take place when subglacial sediment becomes dewatered by freezing or by a change in hydraulic pathways. Carlson Inlet, Antarctica has been interpreted as a stagnated ice stream, based on surface and basal morphology and shallow radar reflection profiling. To resolve the question of whether the flow history of Carlson Inlet has changed in the past, I conducted a ground-based radar survey of Carlson Inlet, the adjacent part of Rutford Ice Stream, and Talutis Inlet, West Antarctica. This survey provides details of the internal ice stratigraphy and allows the flow history to be interpreted. Tight folding of isochrones in Rutford Ice Stream and Talutis Inlet is interpreted to be the result of lateral compression during convergent flow from a wide catchment into a narrow, fast-flowing trunk. In contrast, the central part of Carlson Inlet has gently-folded isochrones that drape over the bed topography, suggestive of local accumulation and slow flow. A 1-D thermo-mechanical model was used to estimate the age of the ice. I conclude that the ice in the centre of Carlson Inlet has been near-stagnant for between 3500 and 6800 yr and that fast flow has not occurred there during that time period.

Item Type:	Publication - Article
Digital Object Identifier (DOI):	10.5194/tc-5-907-2011
Programmes:	BAS Programmes > Polar Science for Planet Earth (2009 - ) > Ice Sheets
Additional Information. Not used in RCUK Gateway to Research.:	Open access article made available under a CC-BY Creative Commons Attribution license.
Date made live:	01 Mar 2012 17:59 +0 (UTC)
URI:	https://nora.nerc.ac.uk/id/eprint/16999

Item Type:

Publication - Article

Digital Object Identifier (DOI):

10.5194/tc-5-907-2011

Programmes:

BAS Programmes > Polar Science for Planet Earth (2009 - ) > Ice Sheets

Additional Information. Not used in RCUK Gateway to Research.:

Open access article made available under a CC-BY Creative Commons Attribution license.

Date made live:

01 Mar 2012 17:59 +0 (UTC)

URI:

https://nora.nerc.ac.uk/id/eprint/16999