Thermohaline structure and circulation beneath the Langhovde Glacier ice shelf in East Antarctica.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 34244489.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-021-23534-w and PMC identifier 8270922.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Basal melting of ice shelves is considered to be the principal driver of recent ice mass loss in Antarctica. Nevertheless, in-situ oceanic data covering the extensive areas of a subshelf cavity are sparse. Here we show comprehensive structures of temperature, salinity and current measured in January 2018 through four boreholes drilled at a ~3-km-long ice shelf of Langhovde Glacier in East Antarctica. The measurements were performed in 302-12 m-thick ocean cavity beneath 234-412 m-thick ice shelf. The data indicate that Modified Warm Deep Water is transported into the grounding zone beneath a stratified buoyant plume. Water at the ice-ocean interface was warmer than the in-situ freezing point by 0.65-0.95°C, leading to a mean basal melt rate estimate of 1.42 m a-1. Our measurements indicate the existence of a density-driven water circulation in the cavity beneath the ice shelf of Langhovde Glacier, similar to that proposed for warm-ocean cavities of larger Antarctic ice shelves.