Rapid retreat of Thwaites Glacier in the pre-satellite era

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dc.citation.firstpage706
dc.citation.issueNumber9
dc.citation.journalTitleNature Geoscience
dc.citation.lastpage713
dc.citation.volumeNumber15
dc.contributor.authorGraham, Alastair G.C.
dc.contributor.authorWåhlin, Anna
dc.contributor.authorHogan, Kelly A.
dc.contributor.authorNitsche, Frank O.
dc.contributor.authorHeywood, Karen J.
dc.contributor.authorTotten, Rebecca L.
dc.contributor.authorSmith, James A.
dc.contributor.authorHillenbrand, Claus-Dieter
dc.contributor.authorSimkins, Lauren M.
dc.contributor.authorAnderson, John B.
dc.contributor.authorWellner, Julia S.
dc.contributor.authorLarter, Robert D.
dc.date.accessioned2022-09-29T15:06:39Z
dc.date.available2022-09-29T15:06:39Z
dc.date.issued2022
dc.description.abstractUnderstanding the recent history of Thwaites Glacier, and the processes controlling its ongoing retreat, is key to projecting Antarctic contributions to future sea-level rise. Of particular concern is how the glacier grounding zone might evolve over coming decades where it is stabilized by sea-floor bathymetric highs. Here we use geophysical data from an autonomous underwater vehicle deployed at the Thwaites Glacier ice front, to document the ocean-floor imprint of past retreat from a sea-bed promontory. We show patterns of back-stepping sedimentary ridges formed daily by a mechanism of tidal lifting and settling at the grounding line at a time when Thwaites Glacier was more advanced than it is today. Over a duration of 5.5 months, Thwaites grounding zone retreated at a rate of >2.1 km per year—twice the rate observed by satellite at the fastest retreating part of the grounding zone between 2011 and 2019. Our results suggest that sustained pulses of rapid retreat have occurred at Thwaites Glacier in the past two centuries. Similar rapid retreat pulses are likely to occur in the near future when the grounding zone migrates back off stabilizing high points on the sea floor.
dc.identifier.citationGraham, Alastair G.C., Wåhlin, Anna, Hogan, Kelly A., et al.. "Rapid retreat of Thwaites Glacier in the pre-satellite era." <i>Nature Geoscience,</i> 15, no. 9 (2022) Springer Nature: 706-713. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-022-01019-9.
dc.identifier.digitals41561-022-01019-9
dc.identifier.doihttps://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-022-01019-9
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/1911/113449
dc.language.isoeng
dc.publisherSpringer Nature
dc.rightsThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.
dc.rights.urihttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
dc.titleRapid retreat of Thwaites Glacier in the pre-satellite era
dc.typeJournal article
dc.type.dcmiText
dc.type.publicationpublisher version
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