"Something is Moving under the Ice" is a recently released study at NASA's earth observatory. Although these scientists don't make sweeping conclusions due to the need for more investigation, I can make that conclusion.
Science, 7 March 2003. The 'role' of ice shelves and ice 'terraces' to the protections of large ice formations and the relationship with sea level rise. There is a driect correlation.
Hernán De Angelis,* Pedro Skvarca
The possibility that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet will collapse as a consequence of ice shelf disintegration has been debated for many years. This matter is of concern because such an event would imply a sudden increase in sea level. Evidence is presented here showing drastic dynamic perturbations on former tributary glaciers that fed sections of the Larsen Ice Shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula before its collapse in 1995. Satellite images and airborne surveys allowed unambiguous identification of active surging phases of Boydell, Sjögren, Edgeworth, Bombardier, and Drygalski glaciers. This discovery calls for a reconsideration of former hypotheses about the stabilizing role of ice shelves.
Instituto Antártico Argentino, Cerrito 1248, C1010AAZ Buenos Aires, Argentina. * To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: glacio@dna.gov.ar
This is a statement by a very astute scientist by the name of Helen Amanda Fricker:
The possibility that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet will collapse as a consequence of ice shelf disintegration has been debated for many years. This matter is of concern because such an event would imply a sudden increase in sea level. Evidence is presented here showing drastic dynamic perturbations on former tributary glaciers that fed sections of the Larsen Ice Shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula before its collapse in 1995. Satellite images and airborne surveys allowed unambiguous identification of active surging phases of Boydell, Sjögren, Edgeworth, Bombardier, and Drygalski glaciers. This discovery calls for a reconsideration of former hypotheses about the stabilizing role of ice shelves.
Instituto Antártico Argentino, Cerrito 1248, C1010AAZ Buenos Aires, Argentina. * To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: glacio@dna.gov.ar
This is a statement by a very astute scientist by the name of Helen Amanda Fricker:
...In late May 2006, Fricker was concentrating on West Antarctica, around the Whillans and Mercer Ice Streams on the Ross Ice Shelf. She looked for the small elevation changes that would mark grounding lines, the place where the ice shelves stopped resting on land and started floating on the ocean. Marking the grounding lines would improve tidal models, which would improve understanding of ice shelf behavior, which influences glaciers, which influence sea level. Important work with a long-term payoff, but not terribly exciting.
Then she found something she didn’t expect.
Fricker found an elevation change, but two things about it struck her as weird. For one, it was in the wrong place—near a feature known as Engelhardt Ice Ridge—inland from where the ice shelf grounding line should have been. For another, the elevation change was far bigger than the typical tidal movement of 1 or 2 meters (3 to 6.5 feet). Between October 2003 and November 2005, the area she was examining had dropped roughly 9 meters (nearly 30 feet). “I wasn’t expecting to find this at all,” Fricker recalls. “I was shocked.” Something under the ice had to be moving....
...“Near the grounding line, there were lots of changes that occurred, lots of crevasses [cracks in the ice] that you could see because the moving crevasse ridges and troughs had shifted between images,” explains Scambos. The MODIS images confirmed that the elevation inland of the ice shelf grounding line had changed over an oval-shaped area about 15 by 30 kilometers. The area had clearly dropped in elevation, consistent with Fricker’s ICESat interpretation....
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