CR
Cryospheric Sciences

Image of the week : formation of an ice rise

Image of the week : formation of an ice rise

Deglaciation and formation of an ice rise with the ice-sheet model BISICLES.  The simulation starts with an ice sheet in steady state that overrides a topographic high in the bed, close to the calving front. The sea level is then forced to rise steadily with 1 cm per year during 15 thousand years, and the simulation goes on until the ice sheet reaches steady state.
The animation below shows that the formation of an ice rise delays the grounding line retreat.

For more information see Favier and Pattyn (2015)‘s recent paper.

movieicerise

The  movie shows the ice sheet retreat and the ice rise formation and evolution in between the two steady states. The movie starts after 5 thousands years of sea level rise. The ice upper surface is colored as a function of the velocity magnitude. The ice lower surface is colored either in light gray for floating ice or dark gray for grounded ice. Credit: L. Favier.

 

Sophie Berger is a postdoc at the Alfred Wegener Institut, Germany. She is using various remote sensing data and techniques to investigate the dynamics and stability of the ice shelves in Dronning Maud Land (East Antarctica). She completed her PhD at the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB), Brussels, Belgium. She tweets as @SoBrgr.


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