Climatic warming and basal melting of large ice sheets Possible implications for East Antarctica

Details Climatic warming and basal melting of large ice sheets Possible implications for East Antarctica Climatic warming and basal melting of large ice sheets Possible implications for East Antarctica

Jan 1987

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1987georl..14...33s&link_type=abstract

Geophysical Research Letters (ISSN 0094-8276), vol. 14, Jan. 1987, p. 33-36.

Physics

Antarctic Regions, Atmospheric Heating, Climatology, Glaciers, Ice Environments, Melting, Carbon Dioxide, Greenhouse Effect, Mathematical Models, Surface Temperature, Thickness

Scientific paper

Climatic warming is shown to be capable of inducing shear heating instability and basal melting in a model ice sheet that is creeping slowly downslope. Growth times of the instability are calculated from a nonlinear analysis of temperature and flow in the model ice sheet whose surface undergoes a presecribed increase of temperature. The source of instability lies in the decrease of maximum ice thickness for steady downslope creep with increasing surface temperature. A surface temperature increase of 5 to 10 K can cause instability on a 10,000-year time scale for realistic ice rheology. The instability occurs suddenly after a prolonged period of dormancy. The instability might be relevant to the East Antarctic ice sheet. Warming associated with the Holocene interglacial epoch that heralded the end of the last ice age may have set the East Anatarctic ice sheet on a course toward widespread instability some 10,000 years later. The present CO2-induced climate warming is also a potential trigger for instability and basal melting of the East Antarctic ice sheet.

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