Brief communication: A submarine wall protecting the Amundsen Sea intensifies melting of neighboring ice shelves


Contact
Qiang.Wang [ at ] awi.de

Abstract

<jats:p>Abstract. Disintegration of ice shelves in the Amundsen Sea, in front of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, has the potential to cause sea level rise by inducing an acceleration of ice discharge from upstream grounded ice. Moore et al. (2018) proposed that using a submarine wall to block the penetration of warm water into the subsurface cavities of these ice shelves could reduce this risk. We use a global sea ice–ocean model to show that a wall shielding the Amundsen Sea below 350 m depth successfully suppresses the inflow of warm water and reduces ice shelf melting. However, these warm water masses get redirected towards neighboring ice shelves, which reduces the net effectiveness of the wall. The ice loss is reduced by 10 %, integrated over the entire Antarctic continent. </jats:p>



Item Type
Article
Authors
Divisions
Primary Division
Programs
Primary Topic
Research Networks
Publication Status
Published
Eprint ID
50488
DOI https://www.doi.org/10.5194/tc-13-2317-2019

Cite as
Gürses, Ö. , Kolatschek, V. , Wang, Q. and Rodehacke, C. B. (2019): Brief communication: A submarine wall protecting the Amundsen Sea intensifies melting of neighboring ice shelves , The Cryosphere, 13 (9), pp. 2317-2324 . doi: https://www.doi.org/10.5194/tc-13-2317-2019


Download
[thumbnail of tc-13-2317-2019.pdf]
Preview
PDF
tc-13-2317-2019.pdf

Download (2MB) | Preview

Share


Citation

Geographical region

Research Platforms
N/A

Campaigns
N/A


Actions
Edit Item Edit Item