Lateral Fluxes Drive Basal Melting Beneath Thwaites Eastern Ice Shelf, West Antarctica
Davis, Peter E.D. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6471-6310; Nicholls, Keith W.
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2188-4509; Holland, David M.; Schmidt, Britney E.; Washam, Peter; Fernández Castro, Bieito; Riverman, Kiya L.; Smith, James A.
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1333-2544; Anker, Paul G.D.
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4359-4342; Mullen, Andrew D.; Dichek, Daniel; Clyne, Elisabeth; Makinson, Keith
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5791-1767.
2025
Lateral Fluxes Drive Basal Melting Beneath Thwaites Eastern Ice Shelf, West Antarctica.
Geophysical Research Letters, 52 (3), e2024GL111873.
10, pp.
10.1029/2024GL111873
Preview |
Text (Open Access)
© 2025. The Author(s).This is an open access article under theterms of the Creative CommonsAttribution License, which permits use,distribution and reproduction in anymedium, provided the original work isproperly cited. Geophysical Research Letters - 2025 - Davis - Lateral Fluxes Drive Basal Melting Beneath Thwaites Eastern Ice Shelf West.pdf - Published Version Available under License Creative Commons Attribution 4.0. Download (2MB) | Preview |
Abstract/Summary
Thwaites Glacier is one of the fastest-changing ice-ocean systems in Antarctica. Basal melting beneath Thwaites' floating ice shelf, especially around pinning points and at the grounding line, sets the rate of ice loss and Thwaites' contribution to global sea-level rise. The rate of basal melting is controlled by the transport of heat into and through the ice–ocean boundary layer toward the ice base. Here we present the first turbulence observations from the grounding line of Thwaites Eastern Ice Shelf. We demonstrate that contrary to expectations, the turbulence-driven vertical flux of heat into the ice–ocean boundary layer is insufficient to sustain the basal melt rate. Instead, most of the heat required must be delivered by lateral fluxes driven by the large-scale advective circulation. Lateral processes likely dominate beneath the most unstable warm-cavity ice shelves, and thus must be fully incorporated into parameterizations of ice shelf basal melting.
Item Type: | Publication - Article |
---|---|
Digital Object Identifier (DOI): | 10.1029/2024GL111873 |
ISSN: | 0094-8276 |
Date made live: | 03 Feb 2025 13:35 +0 (UTC) |
URI: | https://nora.nerc.ac.uk/id/eprint/537874 |
Actions (login required)
![]() |
View Item |
Document Downloads
Downloads for past 30 days
Downloads per month over past year